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Diane Wiener: Center director is creating an intersectional and inclusive environment at SU

Diane Wiener: Center director is creating an intersectional and inclusive environment at SU

Diane Wiener serves as the first and only full-time director of a disability cultural center at a university in the United States. Alexandra Moreo | Senior Staff Photographer

By Molly Gibbs

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UPDATED: April 25, 2018 at 11:52 p.m.

Editor’s note: The “Who is Syracuse?” series runs in The Daily Orange every spring to highlight individuals who embody the spirit of Syracuse University. The D.O. encouraged members of the campus community to nominate people who fit this description, and The D.O. selected the final eight nominees. This series explores their stories.

Angry chants echoed in the hallway of the Schine Student Center on Friday morning as Diane Wiener turned the corner, out of breath. She had just been showing support for the students protesting the Theta Tau videos. She unlocked the door of the Disability Cultural Center, a small room tucked in a hallway of Schine, and headed towards her office.

As the DCC’s director, Wiener’s office door is plastered with stickers, posters and quotes, displaying messages like “Therapy Dog Thursday” and “Black Trans Lives Matter” and a Mahatma Gandhi quote. Wiener said the door reflects her and the DCC’s commitment to intersectionality. Spider-Man figurines and other superhero characters sit on crowded bookshelves inside the office, and sticky notes and posters of comic book characters cover the walls.

Lining one wall is a custom-made shelf, ordered to Wiener’s specifications so that it’s accessible to all students. Stacked Braille business cards sit on a messy desk, and everything from the light switches to the buttons that open doors automatically are at a lower height. The Disability Cultural Center is the students’ space, she said.

Wiener said that annually, hundreds of current and prospective students, faculty, staff, community members and alumni visit or engage with the DCC. Since fall 2011, she has served as the center’s full-time administrative director, the first person to serve in this position at a university in the United States. She pushes for diversity, social justice, inclusion and empowerment on the Syracuse University campus.

Wiener’s passion for diversity and inclusivity can be traced back to her childhood. She said she has a history of activism, but her father’s suicide when she was a teenager helped her realize the importance of mental health awareness. She added that she lives with anxiety and depression and has experienced, in the past, unremitting distress and suicidality, which she’s grateful she no longer experiences.

“I do have other disabilities that are ‘hidden’ but most of my disability identity is around mental health and emotional variance,” Wiener said.

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Alexandra Moreo | Senior Staff Photographer

Wiener also stresses the importance of intersectionality and a cross-disabilities perspective. She said it’s not possible to discuss issues regarding race and ethnicity without also discussing issues regarding gender, sexuality and disability, as well as considering spiritual identity or its absence.

Her efforts haven’t gone unnoticed by members of the SU community. Associate Dean of Hendricks Chapel Rebecca Reed Kantrowitz said she thinks Wiener’s work has already changed the culture of SU’s campus tremendously.

“I think we’ve really been blessed to have Diane always doing so much of the heavy lifting,” Kantrowitz said.

Priya Penner, a sophomore political science and citizenship and civic engagement major, said she feels welcome in all respects at the DCC.

“As a student on this campus, as a disabled student on this campus, I know that I have a space at the Disability Cultural Center,” Penner said. “Not only are my separate identities welcome at the DCC, but who I am as a person, a disabled, queer woman of color who was born in a different country, all of my identities and experiences and what those experiences create are welcome at the DCC.”

Devin Nonnenman is one of Wiener’s mentees and currently a resident adviser. The senior, who’s a chemistry and forensic science double major in the College of Arts and Sciences, said people don’t need to know or speak to Wiener to see the impact she’s made on campus.

Nonnenman has had Wiener talk to his residents about diversity, inclusion and disability culture. She ended up staying for more than three hours.

His residents realized how much Wiener cared about them, even though she’d only just met them and may never see them again, he said. They talked about her for weeks afterward.

While Wiener pushes for intersectionality at SU, she doesn’t deny the negative impact that intersectionality can have. She said that intersections can work together to create more oppressive experiences — and tying that into the Theta Tau videos, said that it’s possible to use intersections against a specific group of people.

“If people had doubts about the importance of intersectional identity, this video highlights how to use those ideas against people,” Wiener said. “I’m not shocked by what happened.”

She added that she and several of her colleagues felt this incident was inevitable, and Wiener is determined to create a sense of belonging for students who were hurt by it. That means going beyond inclusion.

There are some people like Diane and others involved in diversity and inclusion who get it. And they wake up every day trying to help people both in smaller and large ways.
Stephen Kuusisto

“Inclusion isn’t good enough,” she said. “The protest that’s happening outside is a comment on that in a very deep and vivid way.”

Wiener said she was at Hendricks Chapel during one of the student forums for nearly five hours, listening and taking notes about how she and her role on campus can help the students and the university make changes.

When bad things like this happen in the world or on campus, it’s easy to think everyone is bad as well, said Stephen Kuusisto, a professor in the School of Education. But there are some people, like Wiener, who realize that’s not true. People who wake up every day trying to help people in big and small ways.

Said Kuusisto: “Diane’s knowledge, vision and imagination, I think will be central to bring a true embrace of diversity into play rather than just chatting about it.”

Banner photo by Alexandra Moreo

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, Rebecca Reed Kantrowitz’s position was misstated. Also, Diane Wiener was misnamed. The Daily Orange regrets these errors. 

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