Fighting for Disability Rights: A Conversation with Cameron Lynch ’23
For the past three years, Cameron Lynch ’23 has been advocating for the needs of the immunocompromised. Currently working as an intern for Save the Children, serving on the Board of Directors for the Disability Law Center of Virginia, and acting as the undersecretary for Disability Affairs on campus, Lynch’s life centers around disability advocacy.
COURTESY IMAGE // CAMERON LYNCH
Cameron Lynch’s story as a disability advocate began amid the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2020 when she voiced her experiences and frustrations as an immunocompromised individual on social media.
“I ended up posting on my Instagram page a letter that I wrote to my able-bodied friends about COVID and what it felt like to be immunocompromised during COVID,” Lynch said.
Diagnosed with Type I diabetes, muscular dystrophy, and Celiac disease, Lynch wrote about the often overlooked privilege of a healthy immune system. While for young, able-bodied people, viruses, the flu, and COVID-19 typically result in minimal damage, for those with auto-immune diseases, the consequences can be serious, forcing them to take extra precautions. Quarantine was a reality for Lynch even before COVID, and the pandemic only worsened this fact of life. Lynch expressed the anger — and loneliness — she felt during the pandemic as she watched others disregard essential safety measures, posting group hangouts on Instagram.
“I think that a lot of times able-bodied people don’t understand the privilege that they have,” Lynch said. “People have had to be cognizant of their health for way longer than before COVID… I have always had to beg my friends to get the flu shot because if I get the flu, it’s much more dangerous for me than other people. That was always a conversation I had to have before COVID.”
Lynch’s letter was an expression of overwhelming emotion over her isolation but ended up developing into something entirely unexpected: a support group for immunocompromised college students nationwide, first set in motion by the responses she received from her letter.
“I had maybe fifty people DM me reacting to the letter,” Lynch said. “People I had never met — someone who had seen it from their friend who posted it from a friend. It got pretty widespread.”
These responses inspired Lynch to partner with a friend to create Chronic and Iconic, an immunocompromised support group that connected through weekly Zoom meetings and a group chat.
“It started off with me just DMing all of the people I heard from,’” Lynch said. “I think 20 people came to the first meeting. After that, it became a weekly thing. At 7 p.m. on Sundays, we would have a Zoom call. We had a GroupMe, and people just kept getting added.”
Chronic and Iconic provides encouragement and assistance for those who are disabled. Although Chronic and Iconic is less active now than in 2020, it still serves as an online platform for students to ask questions about COVID-19 university policies, medications, accommodations, and more broadly, the struggles of being a young, immunocompromised student.
“Having someone who understands the life that you live is really important,” Lynch said. “If you have questions about your life, it’s hard to find a doctor who’s going to talk about how to drink safely on this medicine, or like, ‘Hey, can I still go to a party if I’m on immunosuppressants?’”
COURTESY IMAGE // CAMERON LYNCH
A central struggle of being disabled involves having additional daily considerations that aren’t always acknowledged or addressed by non-disabled individuals, so Chronic and Iconic gives disabled individuals the space to discuss the nuances of their lifestyles.
“I think it’s hard being a disabled young person,” Lynch said. “It’s very isolating… and so I wanted to make others feel like they had someone to talk to or had a community behind them.”
Lynch’s disability activism also focuses on the lives of students at The College of William and Mary. Lynch envisions a future peer advisory program for those who have disabilities or are seeking accommodations. Through this program, students at the College familiar with the accommodations process would help coach others on Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) rules and forms as well as educate those who may act insensitively toward those with disabilities. Lynch said that she personally experienced issues with professors asking her to provide reasons for accommodations.
“Professors aren’t legally allowed to ask you what accommodations are for — they just have to accept them,” Lynch said. “But I’ve had a lot of professors ask me what they’re for. I know that’s a common thread, but you don’t have to explain yourself to professors. So teaching students the right ways to go about everything would be beneficial.”
Not only does Lynch desire a peer advisory program, but she also has been helping establish a new student organization on campus for disabled individuals.
“I’m starting a student organization called Student Accessibility and Disability Alliance with two other students that’s more of a social club for disabled students,” Lynch said. “I’m working with another member of [Student Assembly]… [and] also other disabled students from around the school to try and make… a community because it’s hard to find other disabled students at the school.”
Lynch’s peer advisory vision and community-building efforts were inspired by her negative experiences with obtaining accommodations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the administration approaching the issue with sensitivity, no tangible action was taken.
“There was a statement on the website… about how if you couldn’t go back to in-person learning, you should take a gap semester,” Lynch said. “And I think that really hit me pretty hard because it felt like there were no accommodations willing to be made. I did a lot of research, and I pulled out ADA clauses that were in violation and I sent them, and I met with administrators, and they were very understanding of the situation that I was in. But I don’t think a lot of action was taken to remedy it.”
The lack of administrative response ultimately resulted in Lynch taking part in the Washington Center’s D.C. Semester program, which allowed her to take classes online but unfortunately led her to fall behind in her progress toward her Sociology major.
For Lynch and the immunocompromised, COVID-19 proved to be both a blessing and a curse: harmful for their immunity, yet progressive for society’s view on health safety.
“I think it’s nice in a way that COVID kind of accelerated people’s awareness of health and mortality in a sense, but some people have had to think about that for way longer or grow up not being able to go to school because of a disability,” Lynch said.
After Lynch advocated for greater accessibility access at the College, she pursued this same goal across Virginia, emailing and reaching out to disabled students at other schools to create a widespread platform for the cause. After submitting letters to Virginia schools with no response, Lynch reached out to news sources with the unlikely goal of appearing on national news. Here Lynch finally found success, making headlines in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, and BBC.
“I wrote to every other school in Virginia trying to get them to add online classes and found a disabled student at each of the colleges to sign their name off on the letter,” Lynch said. “And then after that, and not hearing back from a lot of schools, we reached out to news sources on Twitter and Instagram. And then after having stories written about that… I heard back.”
While valuable, the media coverage had its downsides. Online haters pushed back on Lynch’s platform by minimizing Lynch’s disabilities and experiences.
“I knew that media coverage would help us accomplish everything, but it’s kind of hard when your personal life is put on blast like that,” Lynch said. “I gave a lot of personal information, and honestly, I got pushback on social media… A couple people told me I wasn’t disabled ‘enough’ to be talking about this issue. I had some people talking about how I was lying [about my experiences].”
Despite the online animosity, Lynch hopes to continue aiding the disabled community. In the future, Lynch, a Government and Sociology double major on the pre-law track, hopes to work on legislation and ADA compliance. Recently, Lynch worked alongside disability lawyers in the Department of Justice to gain experience creating change through policy-based law.
“I worked for the first time with disability lawyers, and I thought that that was a really cool profession,” Lynch said. “They were really amazing people who wanted not just to stick to the status quo, but wanted to really impact the ways that disabled Americans live their lives. So that’s the goal.”
Lynch’s goal has remained the same throughout these past three years: to provide equity for disabled individuals. Lynch’s previous work on Chronic and Iconic, her current advocacy with the Student Accessibility and Disability Alliance, and her future goals of working on ADA legislation all revolve around creating an inclusive community for disabled individuals, all while teaching them what true inclusion looks like.
“I love my friends here, I love the school, and I just really wanted to make sure that this community felt as inclusive as possible,” Lynch said. “So what I stand for is equity. I really want to make sure that students feel that they are taken care of.”