Emily Beitiks: Hello. Welcome, everyone. We're going to wait a moment or two while the room fills.
Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us today.
I'm just going to give it a moment more while the attendee number is still climbing, and then we'll get started.
All right. Let's begin.
Hi, everybody. My name is Emily Beitiks.
And I'm the interim director at the Longmore Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University.
This event, I'm so surprised and excited by how many people signed up for today so we had to convert it to a webinar.
And for more customized captions you can visit tinyurl.com/LongmoreCaptions.
And please use the Q&A function today to submit your questions if that's possible for you. That's going to be an easier way for me ‑‑ it's just me today. There's no tech support. We'll see how smoothly that goes.
And if you need to access the raised hand function to be able to ask your question by using your voice or by signing through our interpreters, you can use the raise hand function for that.
A quick introduction. I'm the interim director here. I'm a white cis woman in my late, late thirties. I'm sitting in front of a window in the Longmore Institute office. No one else is here today. I have a mask off at the moment. I have no apparent disability. I identify as someone who has had very intimate experiences with disability and as a child, disabled adult. I currently identify as non‑disabled. Which is why my title is interim which is a longer story which is part of the Longmore project we're working on. I'll focus on our Emerge topic today. Let's see, before we dive into questions, I want to share a little bit about how this all came together.
Q&A is not wanting to show up for me.
It's going to be an obstacle.
Weird.
My Q&A box is totally hidden from me which does not help me at all.
(Muted)
Well, I'm going to chat for a bit and see if I can fix it in a second.
So, how this came about. The Longmore Institute was invited to apply for some funding by the Mellon Foundation which is somewhat new into diving into disability studies. They invited a concept paper. In 2017, the former director, Cathy Kudlick and I had written up a quick idea for a project that never got funding at the time, and it kind of sat in a folder but part of the idea came from our namesake, the Paul Longmore had created this National Endowment For the Humanities Summer Institute. He had brought together a number of disability studies scholars back in the year 2000. And this led to many lifelong friends and many sort of early scholars in disability studies and we really liked that idea and we also really were excited to think about how we might diversity what that model looks like. Meaning being able to bring more questions to ‑‑ sorry, more dialogue from different not just sort of inside of academia, but being able to bring in activists and artists and community organizers to that work, cultural producers to that work, filmmakers to that work and also people inside of the disability studies, meaning very broadly there's lots of people engaging with disability studies, not just happening inside of academia and that there be commitment to doing some work that also adds more diversity to the conversations happening inside of disability studies.
So, my personal role in this project is that I wrote the grant and I will be overseeing the logistics and supervising, but we are going to be hiring a position to be overseeing this project.
So, you know, I'm the face of this today. I don't want to be moving forward. And if you are interested in applying, keep your focus on the Longmore Institute newsletter or we'll certainly be sharing more soon.
So, let's see. We have gotten some questions to begin with leading up to this that I will kind of start off with answering.
But before I dive into any specifics, just a few sort of things about the limitations of what today is happening. I really kind of threw this together ‑‑ everything is moving really fast for us, which is a challenge and I imagine might be a challenge for some of you as well as we sort of found out we got the funding in late December and we had proposed this three‑year initiative that hinges on a summer project, but unfortunately summer comes really fast this year. We'll have a little bit more time for year two and year three, but because of when the funding arrived and when the summer workshop starts, it's a nonstop couple of months for us.
We have very quickly sort of developed this call and tried to balance getting the information that we need to be able to make the decisions of like who we're supporting and also trying to not make it too overwhelming of an application and we've developed a lot of frequently asked questions that we're providing some feedback onto provide some additional details, but I'm sure there are many more questions coming in that we maybe haven't fully thought about yet.
So if that's the case, I might not be able to answer them today. I might take that question, talk to my advisory council, talk to our selection committee and try to get some more answers that I can share with you.
I myself am not on the selection committee. That committee has not had a chance to meet yet. Specific things about how this is going to be ‑‑ how those decisions are going to be handled we haven't fully made up yet.
We also don't have all the answers because we don't yet know how many applications we're going to get and what the applications are going to look like. There's going to be a lot of subjective choices that will be made by that selection committee once they are able to see everything that's come in. This really is a guinea pig year. We won't know until the fellows are lined up. We hope this is an opportunity for the fellows to shape things as a collaborative and for the fellows to be the ones making some of these decisions of how the actual flow of programming looks from day‑to‑day, for example.
Okay. Let's see if, oh my goodness. That is so frustrating. I cannot explain to you all what I am seeing. My Q&A box is entirely limited. I can see some. For some reason it is just glitching at the worst possible moment for me. I apologize if I can't see. I'm going to go ahead and enable chat. And if you actually can switch over to submitting your questions in the chat, that will give me a little bit more freedom. Apologies. That might mean some of our guests need to turn off the chat in accessibility and we will make sure to be reading the things that come in, in chat. I keep saying we like there's a crew of us here. Okay.
Some of the questions that came in, in advance.
We were pushed on ‑‑ we were kind of articulating something that's said 9 to 5 Pacific time and there would be breaks, but already that language kind of deterred some folks thinking we meant you had to be here 9 to 5. That is obviously not very disability friendly.
So know that the plan that we have in mind is every single day there's a four‑hour ‑‑ 3 to 4‑hour synchronous experience. Some people will be online, others will be joining in person, and when that exact time is, we are hoping will be part of the process to determine once we line up the fellows. So there will be a process where we line up the fellows and we'll have some alternates to see when can we even make these blocks possible each day. There's going to be a number of competing accommodations between people's disability needs of when you have the access to be able to be participating, time zones for people who are participating virtually, and the needs of the staff running this program and handling the logistics and the organizations that we'll be meeting with.
So it's a little bit loose in terms of how the exact timing will all work out.
That's an example of something we really will be inviting the fellows to be a part of that conversation, but what we also want to make clear is we're hoping that people with the stipend we're able to provide will prioritize this for the month of July. It's not something you are squeezing in with lots of stuff going on. We really want that network to get a lot of time to bond and come together and also that you are, you know, wherever with all the free time that is left open, developing your own project whatever that looks like.
We received a lot of questions about the age of participants.
You know, am I too old to apply? That would be illegal for us to use age as a factor in applying. So it's definitely not about age. But it is about, you know, how long have you been actively engaging with the disability work that you are doing.
So, um, you could have somebody who is in their 60s but is relatively new to 4 to 5 years new to engaging with disability in their work and in their daily practice and in their external commitments. And so, um, it's not about how old you are. It's about how long have you been doing this work. So we're looking for people who have been actively engaged in doing this work for that 4 to 5 years range.
We have already heard from a lot of people that I think have been in this field for a very long time and are too qualified.
So if you were able to see the frequently asked questions document, it kind of tried to articulate that the way to think about how to determine whether or not to apply would be to look at the Ford Futures program. That shows really amazing people who are doing these incredible changing the world projects and they are much further along than we are looking to support with this project. We're really envisioning this as an opportunity to support people who might someday be like those Ford future people, but are not there yet, and are sort of currently lacking the support network or the opportunities to dive into that scholar‑activist process and that this would be a benefit to them.
Another question was around the mentor. You know, are you supposed to come with your mentor already picked out? A mentor will be assigned in dialogue with the selected fellows. So we will have some ideas and of people who we're in community with, who we know. You might have your own ideas and we would love to hear them. We do have a stipend for those mentors to be compensated and so, but it's not assumed that you have to come in with a mentor, the idea is we could help make a new connection to support the fellows work. And it would be up to the fellows whether they want to sort of if they are an academic and they want to have a new relationship that somebody that's more doing activist work we could look to make a new connection or if it's more useful for you to have a mentor who is more in your area, that would also be up to the fellows.
Someone asked can you apply for a collaborative project? I know it's kind of confusing we're using this language of you must do an independent project. Of course, we celebrate interdependence in this world. We would certainly welcome projects that are thinking about collaborating and you could name that. You could have a lead applicant or you could say we had someone reach out and they said they would want to split the stipend, split the mentor and sort of use one slot, but be two people working on a project together. We are certainly open to that.
When will the decisions become available? So, again, we're still trying to determine the timing of all of this with our selection committee.
But I know that we have to finalize the contract for our housing for those who will come in person by April 1st. So that's certainly the deadline that I would expect fellows are deciding yes I'm coming or not or I'm participating virtually.
So our goal is certainly by mid to late March you are being notified. We don't have a set date yet. I know you need time because it's such a dramatic giving up a chunk of the summer. So we are trying to make those decisions as quickly as we can. We just can't fully see just how many applicants we're going to have and how cumbersome this process is going to be because we are already seeing such incredible exciting applications coming in.
I've received a lot of questions about people wanting to run their specific project idea by me. And unfortunately we are just completely unable to do so. One, because it's not my decision. I'm not on the selection committee. So I'd be wasting your time because my perspective doesn't matter and the selection committee are not being compensated enough to be able to review all the possible applications coming in. And the few folks that have written with a couple ideas my answer has been kind of the obvious one of do what most excites you because I do believe that will lead to the stronger applications.
Someone asked what do you do if you have family who you want to come with you and you want to be in person? Well, a few different options. One if you have family that could be a reason for virtual participation. We are not locking that down to just disability accommodations why someone would need to participate virtual. It might be things like you have a young kid at home you want to be with.
If you are selected and you have a family we will work with the housing option to figure out what's possible. I reached out to them and haven't gotten an answer back on how that works. We would expect the fellow to be able to pay the difference for the sort of meal plan or extra housing costs to support the family living in the unit.
What COVID‑19 precautions will be in place to keep the fellows safe? Will masks be required for those who are able to wear masks?
So at San Francisco State our university was kind of a leader in doing really great access support during COVID and then it has relatively recently completely swung the other way. And so right now not only is there no mask mandate, but we are prohibited from requiring masks at any of our events on campus or any of our meetings on campus.
So all I can say is that it would be up to the fellows to make a group agreement and I am certainly optimistic that as our current student fellows do, they are constantly wearing masks.
But I cannot promise and certainly if you decide to be in person, the housing accommodations are a private room, but in a shared building. So I cannot promise that others in that building would be safe in terms of COVID. And so that is another very big part of why we decided to offer this as hybrid.
So now I'm switching over to the questions I am able to see on the Q&A. Somebody said that they saw the limitations on the international component but want to confirm that international scholar‑activists can apply or if it is weighted toward U.S. nationals.
So we ‑‑ in case people didn't see the frequently asked questions document and please do make sure to check it out. We can accept people from outside the U.S., but there is such a short timeline that we are so incredibly understaffed that we are not able to work with participants to get a visa.
We can write a letter of support saying you are part of this, you have been accepted to participate in this program. So we imagine that some of our, if international fellows are selected, they may want to do the virtual option.
There's also this other caveat which is that we are part of the public institution. So there are some very clear guidelines about how we can give money. And so the way the stipend works it will be taxable income for everyone and when you are outside of the U.S. the taxable income rate can be quite high. It can be above ‑‑ somewhere between 40 to 50 percent sometimes on this sort of stipend. So that is going to really cut into the generosity of that stipend. That might not be quite right.
Someone else asked do I have to be in disability studies in order to apply? We are really hoping there is an interest in a commitment to disability studies, but there is a real acknowledgment that that does not mean you are at a academic institution where you are studying disability studies. It might be just who are you reading in your off time? Is there an effort to connect your work to bigger conversations that are happening not just in academia, but by Disability Justice activists and community organizers that are thinking about disability studies.
So if you are interested in disability studies but have not fully had an opportunity to dive in, that is a very possible opportunity for ‑‑ fit for why this exists.
Um, same person also shared I'm graduating this spring, can I still attend? This is not just for San Francisco State students. So you absolutely can.
What time does this meeting go until today? It goes until 1:00 p.m. Pacific time. It will be recorded so if you have to pop off early we'll send it to all attendees.
Someone is wondering about advice for pitching a project that is a smaller part of a larger project or body of work? That is completely reasonable. We do not ‑‑ we are fully aware that this is not ‑‑ it's a tight month. The stipend is not enough. We don't want you to feel like you have to sort of shoot the moon to impress in these applications. We want to know an honest what could you do with some time and support in this month to develop something that really engages with what scholar‑activism can look like.
And so it can be a part of a bigger project that you are doing as long as by the end of the month when we have a public hybrid symposium with the goal of showing off what you've done, you would have something that you would be ready to sort of share about. It could definitely be a project that's still evolving.
How do I envision dissertation and large scale projects. Just saying a word or two more about that. It could be a chunk of your research and just very clear parameters around why that chunk would benefit from this opportunity.
So it should be something that would be more than just what you would be doing on your own without this opportunity. We want to see that this is going to help you in some way. And so maybe that's a good opportunity to just say a little bit more about what this is.
What is it going to look like? It's that you are spending time with a network with others and others who are doing this work and from diverse fields in which this work is happening. And we envision making a lot of time and opportunities for you to meet with various people who we ‑‑ and organizations who are really good examples of scholar‑activism. People who are finding ways to engage with disability studies in grassroots and community projects and organizers who are also kind of always asking bigger questions about how do we understand disability? And artists and thinking about accessible art and the activism around accessible art in the Bay Area, for example.
So we hope that we will be inviting some organizations and other sort of leaders to meet with the fellows and not just sort of like tell about the work that folks do, but really have some very interesting ‑‑ let's pull back the curtain a little bit and find out a little bit more about what are some of the challenges? What are some of the messy places? What would it mean to ‑‑ what would benefit these organizations and individuals in a scholar‑activist practice? What would it look like? What sort of help do folks need? That's what we envision. Excursions we don't fully know what will be happening in the Bay Area in July. We work with a lot of different museums that are doing really cool accessible arts programming so we're hoping that, for example, one day it might be an afternoon visit to a museum while making sure that there is a hybrid participation option that is like seeing art access in practice.
Or maybe there will be access dance. We'll have a show that we can all experience or maybe it's just an evening screening where we're watching some films from Superfest Disability Film Festival.
So that's kind of what we have in mind. And a lot of time for the fellows to be in conversation with each other and sharing about the projects that are evolving and asking for help and a lot of sort of group collaboration and thinking.
Will there be opportunities to collaborate with SF State students and other fellowship members? Yeah. Lots of time for the group to really bond. That is one of our biggest goals is not just sort of the individual development for all the fellows involved, but that there be opportunities for new networks and friendships that will continue to matter after this month is over.
Okay. I've shared a little bit about mentors.
Are there any limitations to how the funding can be used? Spent? Does it have to be used specifically for project expenses or can it be used for personal living expenses? We are not going to ask you to tell us what you are using the funding for.
The only caveat is when we ask the application question about the project we said if this is a project that has a lot of costs we'd like to know that you have a plan in place for how to carry that out.
So the $10,000 stipend, it could be something that you use for your needing to take a month off of work. It could be something that you use for the project itself. And it could be something that you use for your daily survival. And we are not going to ask any questions about that or expect you to justify where the funds went.
You could buy a really nice new outfit and we will not ask any questions.
Is there anything the selection committee doesn't want to see? So, um, I can't fully speak for them except that I can say, you know, we are getting a lot of applications already. And if you are way too overqualified. You've been in this field for a long time. You have lots of connections. You might put together an amazing application, but it's just not a fit for this project.
And then in terms of the links to other work samples and things like that, we would rather if you didn't sneak in a ton of extra stuff into those questions that kind of expects them to go watch your last show or read your book or things like that.
Can I apply if I'm from India? Yes. But please see the information about international applications.
Somebody asked about the partnerships. I already answered that.
Can unsuccessful applicants this round reapply next year? Yes. Definitely.
But I don't know yet if I can share some of the selection committee feedback with you all to give a little bit of guidance of what, you know, how close it was or if it was a big miss.
I will be discussing that with the selection committee, but certainly we would expect that applicants can reapply. We will have a wait list. So there will be some people who will know they got close, but maybe didn't get the final slots. And, you know, so I would particularly expect wait list participants to reapply. And I also cannot guarantee that next year it will be the same application questions or the same focus because this is an evolving project and we will see the lessons learned and we will be learning a significant amount from these fellows that will give us the opportunity to make sure we are constantly growing.
I'm curious about the amount of detail y'all are looking for regarding our intended projects. For example, are you looking for grant proposal level details? Or is it okay if our plans are a little more theoretical or if we don't have all the details worked out yet. You'll have to consult with a mentor to flesh that out.
Again, this is another one that will really be up to the selection committee to figure out as they are looking at all of the applications that come in.
It's a quick ‑‑ the month will go quick. So certainly the hope is that you, your project is enough that you know what you are doing and will be ready to dive in.
And also we would hope that your mentor would be shaping the project and that your collaboration with the nine other fellows would be shaping the project.
So that definitely doesn't tell you all that much, but it's just to say that, yes, we're looking for a carved out project and also there will be some, you know, growth and change in the project once you fully dive in. We're very aware.
Would the scholars we're paired with be available to participate long‑term? If the project is a documentary requiring scholarship. And probably more than one scholar during the full project.
We ‑‑ so if the scholars you mean the mentor or the other fellows? The agreement with the fellowship is that you come for the month and then for ten months after there will still be monthly meet‑ups and that is to try to continue this network once it is no longer part of this sort of core intensive because again, one of our goals for doing this is we want to see more scholar activist networks in place.
So that is a hope, but I certainly can't promise anything about if the fellows are going to want to continue to be in contact. That would be our hope, but yeah. I don't know.
Are the fellows expected to work on their project outside of the month long workshop and finish the project in the first year or over the course of the three years?
So the project is much smaller than that. It is a whatever you can do in a month. That might mean a chunk of a bigger project. And we will certainly, you know, for our own sort of grant reporting be sort of following up and saying were you able to do anything more on this? Is there any impact that the Emerge fellowship had for you? But, you know, what the obligation that we are asking the fellows to make for right now is the goal of what you can do in a month's time. Will there be an opportunity for one on one meetings?
So the mentor meetings will be one on one. And certainly, you know, I am willing to meet with anybody who wants to meet with me who is accepted into the fellowship. I'm also very eager to try to make connections for the Emerge fellows if you have somebody who you really want to meet, I'm happy to try and support fellows getting as many of those sort of one on one connections as possible.
But what's built into our program and our funding model is funds for the mentors, funds for the organizations and other disability leaders who are coming into have these open conversations with us. So those one on one meetings are just a matter of who is up for also helping out and supporting our Emerge fellows which I hope there's a lot of people are really excited to see this happen. And so I would hope we are able to leverage that to get you lots of support.
It does not have to be a new project. It can be something already underway. You are completing the next chunk of it and moving it further along and it also doesn't have to be finished so middles are okay.
Okay. Hold on. I'm going to go to the chat for a little bit. See what I've been totally missing there. How strict are the requirements around the intersectional nature of the project? My work hinges on the intersection of Disability Justice and environmental justice which I believe is deeply related to issues of race, gender, sexuality, incarceration, and immigration.
If I make this case in my application am I still eligible to apply? Yes.
I'm curious about ‑‑ I answered this one already.
Forgive the awkwardness. I'm just reading through the questions in the chat that were already ‑‑ is the deadline strictly the 28th? Yes.
The only exceptions we would make to the deadline are if the Longmore Institute ourselves made a mistake with the form or something like that. We are going to be very overwhelmed with the number of applications and we have tried to make those application questions not overly cumbersome so that a month is doable. But we know that some people may just miss the cycle and apply for next year or the following year.
So it's not ideal. Ideally it would have been announced much sooner and would be up for a few months just so you all ‑‑ the idea of people who are interested in this to begin with means you are people who are doing all kinds of other interesting things in your life and I know when a sudden thing like this appears that's a lot to kind of have to try to work in.
But we are just under some frustrating constraints of the way our university moves and to make sure we're able to pay people on time, to make sure we're able to make the flight arrangements and to get people safely lodged in accessible housing we have pretty tight deadlines that we can't be very loose about.
Okay.
How many cohort members is Longmore committed to accepting? We have budgeted for ten fellows per year for three total years of workshop. And, of course, we would love to make this something that we keep doing if it is going well. It is very much in line with what the Longmore Institute is.
And what we love to do. Our whole Institute was founded by Paul Longmore who was just somebody who so beautifully wore both hats as a scholar‑activist and we really try to keep that thinking alive and so, you know, but I certainly can't promise more than what we have the funding cycle for.
Would it be possible to participate, attend half in person and half virtually? Yes.
If there was a clear need for that and not just sort of like a preference because of, you know, a vacation or something. That's the kind of thing we would happily support.
Do we need to cite sources in application? And if so, does this contribute to word count?
What a good question that I have not thought about.
I think it's important to credit the work and people who you are drawing directly from. And in terms of trying to make it light on the word count, you could, you know, be very name and year and try to keep it tight as opposed to a sort of formal MLA, Chicago, APA style format. When are decision notifications? I don't know, but I am hoping they can be done by the final week in March.
Will there be access to library? We have a really beautiful library at San Francisco State and we have a very full disability studies library directly in the Longmore Institute. We will be working with the university to get our fellows access. In the past it has been ridiculously complicated. So the idea of getting ten of those approved is going to be something that we will work on and that I cannot say with a hundred percent certainly, yes it will work. I can say we would be creative about finding ways to get books from the library for you.
What are accommodations like if we are to attend in person? So we have budgeted for ASL and captioning. We have a pot of funds for supporting personal care assistant services. We will be working with the housing office to make sure that the housing is accessible for whatever, you know, access looks like for you.
We have done lots of work with the housing here on campus over the year. So it is not a new conversation, but it's also not a conversation that is ever easy with them. They sort of have the yes, we have the ADA compliant rooms. Of course, that might not be what you are looking for.
So, we have great relationships we'll be pulling from. We have a disability service office who is aware of this project and excited to also help and be involved.
But I am also aware that it will ‑‑ we'll be doing some work to try to educate and make sure it fits. That's part of the reason for the rush for the application deadline and all that because the sooner we get the information of who our fellows are and I can find out what your needs are, I can dive deep, deep into that work hopefully with the new program director of this project as well to making sure that we have something safe and accessible to offer you.
The deadline is February 28th. Somebody said is there someone I can get in touch with to provide guidance on the application? Already I personally am overwhelmed with the amount of questions that are coming in that's very specific to project ideas and that's just not possible for us to give that sort of guidance.
So there's this. There's the frequently asked questions document which I recommend you read through. And we are able to if you are having any access needs applying, you can definitely reach out and get help with the application process directly. But if you are looking to run a project idea by someone, um, unfortunately that's just not something the Longmore Institute is able to do at this point.
There isn't a rubric for the application yet. There will be, obviously, before the committee meets and begins scoring all the applications that have come in.
But we did include in the frequently asked questions document some information about what will be used to determine who the strongest candidates are and I'll be sharing that feedback with the selection committee when we first meet.
How do we prove how long we've been doing the work, especially if we don't have support and have not been recognized by any academic or social institution.
So that sounds to me like you would be, you know, an applicant. We're not asking you to prove. We're kind of trusting people when they say this is a fit. My concern is not about that you have the right amount. It's about not having too much experience.
We want to be able to reach people who, you know, don't have this. And so if you feel that's the case for you, articulating that in the question about like why this opportunity matters for you and that would be enough.
Is there a way to participate in person if you require aide assistance? So we do have some funds to support personal care assistant. I don't fully know how big that pot is because I don't know how many fellows are coming.
So once I know all of the access needs that everyone has, I can provide details about we have this much funds to offer to support your personal care assistance needs.
Or, you know, we can help put out a position to hire somebody at SF State, a student to be an assistant for this project.
Can there be two projects? Or is it better to only focus on one?
I think that is another example of something that I just can't say because I don't know what your specific ideas will be like.
If there are two things that you think you definite could get done in the month and they are kind of smaller projects, that would potentially be fine.
It's certainly not a grounds for disqualification.
Wondering if you are specifically looking for arts based projects. What kind of result are you looking for? Arts is one of the realms where we invite applications. It is not the only realm. You could be a community organizer. You could be an activist working on a campaign and your month long project is going to be developing the social media or the infographics or ‑‑ I don't know. An academic could be writing a chapter of a dissertation. It's definitely not just an art‑based project.
If we're working on multiple projects do we share them all or just one?
You have a thousand word count to describe the project.
So if you describe several just know that that is going to stretch your ability to provide depth a little thinner when it goes up another project where they'll have spent the full thousand words describing this one thing. But if you are also doing a couple projects that are all kind of an interesting web and that could be stronger. I just can't say.
So the 10K July stipend is for each of the three July engagements? No. If you are accepted you are just accepted to year one and the $10,000 stipend is supporting your participation in the workshop in July and also the expectation that you will attend monthly virtual calls with your fellows for the next ten months.
But you are not part of year two and year three although we certainly will invite our Emerge fellows from year one to attend and be in conversation and have visits. Not attend in person, but attend the culminating public symposium that is part of this process.
I'm going to skip any individualized questions at this point because we're getting short on time. Boy, this hour is going fast and there's lots of questions. So if I don't get to yours please know I'm going to be collecting all of these and we will use them to add more and more to our frequently asked questions document and we will share that out afterwards with everybody who registered for this program today.
Are there any vaccine requirements or mandates? San Francisco State does have a vaccine requirement. And there is ‑‑ you can give medical exception. That is not in place for like our symposium. We cannot require vaccine mandates for public events any more.
You would not have to share a room. There are some suites where it's possible that you would share a suite, but you would have a private accommodation to yourself. We're still working with the university housing to figure out what is ‑‑ they are going to offer.
But certainly at the very least there would not be an expectation that you would be in a room with an actual roommate like that.
If you are working on a project where you don't yet know what phase it will be at in July, you know, that's fine. You would just kind of tell us about the project that's underway and give us a taste for what a month‑long project for a part of that project would be like.
And seeing some questions about like your major. Again, you do not have to have primarily had an opportunity yet to dive into disability studies as long as your work is focused primarily on disability. We're very aware that there are a lot of places where people are doing some really exciting thinking around disability but do not have the privilege of like studying in your ‑‑ in an academic setting.
What do you mean by scholar‑activism? There's a written out definition in the frequently asked questions document. It's kind of a term that we are using and figuring out all the time when we are using it. It means that the work is engaging with disability studies and if the work is somebody who is coming inside of academia that they are making sure that the work is translating to making social change happen and that scholarship is actually impacting people's lives. It's about the bridges that are being developed between academia and community engagement and grassroots activism. And again, art and film making and cultural organizations and cultural projects are all a part of that conversation as well.
Okay. I'm going to ‑‑ I'm still seeing questions coming in about the three years.
Yes, this is a fellowship that is for one singular summer and then ten months of virtual once a month, but no this is not support for all three years.
We do not have access to any art facilities that would be available for use or any sort of independent studio space. If there are, you know, needs, we can see what we can make happen with the university. But summer school will still be happening so facilities are somewhat limited. This is a really packed in campus so space is a rough thing.
What support will be provided for fellows who rely on personal support staff and/or frequent medical treatments who want to participate in person? How about help navigating access and care in order to participate?
So, um, I mean a few things. One, we will have some funds for supporting care needs. In addition we know some people the 10000 will go towards some of that as well.
And then we also very much hope that the cohort of those in attendance that there will be some, you know, desire to be a part of supporting each other's needs. I can't promise that. All I can say is that it will certainly be part of the conversations that we'll be encouraging the fellows to have to think about what it might look at to develop a network with each other.
And also really, you know, I don't have answers yet for how we are going to make sure that the folks who have to participate virtually don't get left out from those who are in person. I don't want to see this divide happening other than that we're very aware of that divide that can happen. We're going to kind of start the fellowship by having those conversations about how are we going to make sure that everybody is getting to know each other and really developing that, expecting the fellows to be partners in that conversation.
So travel funds we have a pot of funds available. So that would be separate from ‑‑ that will be coming in either May or June. Depending on university bureaucracy and that would be part of your fellowship offer as we are able to offer this for travel, this lodging, this meal plan.
So that is separate from the 10,000?
Somebody is asking if PTSD depression, you know, trauma from assault can all be part of the experience of living with disability? Absolutely. Absolutely.
Okay. We are at time.
And I have not gotten through all your questions yet.
Here's a quick one. Yes, you can bring your own aide. We could figure that out as well.
If you are attending are you required to stay on campus? We would be able to tell you how much we would be contributing towards the campus housing and if you would rather have that to stay locally that is fine. But we wouldn't ‑‑ if you are not coming locally we would not be able to give you that same pocket of money.
So I will look over these questions that I did not get to and try to get you some support and some answers.
I appreciate your patience. You know, I applied for all kinds of fellowships when I was a grad student and I remember you need clear answers. It's deciding are your going to give a month of your life to this experience and even the amount of time to submit applications is time away from other meaningful work that I am sure you all are doing so we really appreciate your time that you are giving us right now.
And are apologetic with some of the murkiness around this project as it shapes out. We are just excited about this. Excited to see what it becomes and to watch it grow when we see those applications come in and when we are able to meet these fellows.
So I just am very grateful to everybody who is sort of feeling this out with us and I do apologize it isn't more clear this and not this because I know that would be easier, but it's just an experimental year. So thank you so much. My final thing will be making sure to get the ‑‑ some of the links that people are requesting of the application into the chat. And if you had a question that I did not get to, you can go ahead and still enter it into the chat right now. I won't answer it now, but I will as we develop ‑‑ that first link is FAQ. We'll be sending these to everybody so if you are not able to access the chat it will be part of what we send out.
There's the apply link.
And there's the link to sign up for the Longmore Institute newsletter. We're doing a ton of events including events this month. If you want to learn more about what we're doing please don't hesitate to sign up. Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you to our interpreter and captioner team. And I ‑‑ e‑mail link list does not work.
Okay. That last link didn't work. I will make sure we send that out to you when we send out the information to everyone. Thank you all so much. Good luck with those applications.
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