Priya Penner: Freshman fights for a more accessible campus across all marginalized identities

When 4-year-old Priya Penner was introduced to the director of the Rochester, New York-based independent living center, one of the first things she said after “hello” was that she would also have his job someday.

It was moments like these that lead Penner’s mother, C. Jean Grover, to believe her daughter would be a leader and activist in her community. Now, as a freshman at Syracuse University, Penner, a political science and citizenship and civic engagement double major, has already made quite an impression on campus as a fearless and compassionate activist and friend.

Penner has become a member of multiple boards and advisory committees for disability groups on campus and in central New York. She also helped organize the Disability Day of Mourning Vigil on campus in March, and read aloud about 900 names of people with disabilities who were murdered by their families and caretakers during the event. Penner will assume the role of president of the Disability Student Union next year.

Penner is a “visionary, and has an understanding that vision doesn’t mean visual,” said Diane Wiener, Penner’s professor and the director of the Disability Cultural Center.

“Being assertive and compassionate and humble are a wonderful combination, especially given how absolutely brilliant she is,” Weiner said.

The disability community at SU has been important for Penner because she doesn’t identify with most students on campus. Within it, Penner said she has found a place that allows her to embrace all her identities as a queer woman of color with a disability.

Penner was born with arthrogryposis, a condition that causes a fusing of joints that predominantly affects her knees, putting her in a permanent “criss-cross, applesauce” position.

While she’s on campus, Penner said she hopes to make SU more accessible for students from all marginalized backgrounds, not just those with disabilities.

In November, Penner went to Canton, Massachusetts, to protest at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, which used electroshock therapy to control the behavior of children with disabilities. The 200-person protest was organized by ADAPT, a national grassroots disability rights organization, which Penner has been involved with since she was 15. Their goal was to shut down the center completely, if at all possible.

Penner quickly rolled to the front door, becoming one of the first protesters to get inside. Soon enough, she had people filing in next to her and behind her. But police were already in the building prepared to stop her and others looking to get in the lobby.

“For a moment I was a little nervous,” Penner said. “It was literally only for a second, and I was like ‘okay this is happening, I’m okay with this,’ because I knew my family was behind me. I knew they had my back.”

Then police began to try to lift Penner and her 300-pound power chair, she said. At one point, the chief of police was on top of her, trying to reach above her head as she curled into a ball underneath him.

Police were unable to move Penner, but the seat in her chair has been a bit loose since, she said.

“It was pretty ridiculous,” she said, adding that it was worth it to fight for the community and protect the rights for children with disabilities to be treated humanely.

Penner was first introduced to activism when her mom began working for the Center for Disability Rights in Rochester, New York.

“While I respect it and I will do it, Priya loved it, and that’s the difference between us. She is way more of an activist than I am,” her mother, C. Jean Grover, said.

Penner was adopted from India and came to the United States when she was 3 and a half years old. Grover already had given birth to twins and wasn’t considering adopting until her friend told her about Penner. Grover identified with Penner because she also has a disability.

Grover added that Penner has always been “fiercely independent,” recalling how excited her daughter was when she got her first power chair at 4 years old.

When Elly Wong saw Penner wearing an ADAPT T-shirt at the LGBT Resource Center’s ice cream social last fall, Wong immediately knew they had to be friends with Penner. Wong also worked with Penner to organize the Disability Day of Mourning Vigil on campus.

“She’s just extremely outgoing and she clearly loves talking to people. She’s just super ready to reach out to pretty much anyone, but especially any disabled person. I feel like she knows everyone, which is real impressive for a freshman,” said Wong, a sophomore policy studies and citizenship and civic engagement double major.

Penner looks down at the words “free” and “activist” tattooed on her right and left forearms, respectively. “Free” is written in Tamil, her native language, and “activist” is represented through the Kanji a Japanese symbol for the word.

For her the words symbolize “how far I’ve… not come, but how far I’ve gone and how far I continue to go.”

Banner photo by Frankie Prijatel | Staff Photographer