I’m Elijah Armstrong I am a junior at
Penn State University in 2015 I went to
Staunton college preparatory school in
Jacksonville Florida
it’s a highly ranked IB high school it
ranks top 10 in Newsweek for national
high schools and it has every year since
roughly 1990 also relevant piece of
information I am a photosensitive
epileptic
I have seizures that are caused in part
by flashing lights and I’ve had these
seizures most of my life my junior year
of high school I had an AP calculus
class and this class was in a room with
a very low ceiling and lights that would
flash in part because the building was
built in like 1860 so what keep expected
but um the lights would flash and it was
a high school block schedule so I was
taking this class every other day and it
would cause me to have seizures I would
go to class I’d have a seizure have to
go home go to the hospital and then deal
with the same thing two days later so
two weeks into the school year I
realized this wasn’t going to work so I
talked to my guidance counselor and I
asked if I could have the light bulbs
changed in the room or if the class
could be held in a different classroom
or if I could take the class online
literally any option that would prevent
me from having to physically deal with
the flashing lights and I was told by my
guidance counselor that Stanton didn’t
do accommodations and that if I needed
an accommodation I would have to leave
for the integrity of the program so I
was taken aback and I reached out to the
assistant principals and the principal
all the way up to the superintendent of
Duval County Public Schools who all told
me that Stanton does not do
accommodations and that for the
integrity of the program I would have to
leave the school and that’s when I
started advocating as a student and I
did the only thing I could do is I told
my own story to every met everyone that
would listen and to a lot of people that
wouldn’t and I ended up getting my own
story put into the Florida Times you
in part because the school
administrators were so adamant in the
idea of not doing accommodations that
they frequently put in writing that for
the sake of the school and the integrity
of the program I would have to leave
because of my disability and when my
article first hit Florida times-union
the reactions fell into one of two camps
the first camp told me that Stanton
doesn’t accommodate and that if I needed
an accommodation I would have to adjust
or move on and the second camp was many
many students and parents who I had to
talk to before who came to me and told
me that they experienced similar issues
not just at Stanton but at other high
schools in Duval County and they didn’t
speak out about it because they were
afraid of facing intense backlash so
this led me to realize how important it
is to educate people on educational
issues and rights and education and that
led me to found my website equal
opportunities for students equal
opportunities for students is a blog
that does text posts and video
interviews and what we do is we have two
purposes one is to educate people on
educational laws and educational rights
and teach people about educational
resources so options that you might not
have known you had beforehand and laws
you might not have known were in place
before because I experienced many many
people who didn’t know that disability
discrimination was covered under the
Americans with Disabilities Act and the
individual the I DEA that didn’t know
that these laws were in place and the
second is to allow students and parents
to tell their story in education to
verbalize when they have experienced
discrimination and not just so that they
can hopefully reach people who can help
them but also to show principals and
teachers and college presidents that
these issues do still happen on our
campuses and not just issues of
disability discrimination racial
discrimination sexual assault sexual
harassment gender discrimination
discrimination based on sexual
orientation these things do happen at
simple
to shed a light on it and I have been
advocating as a student been
participating in student advocacy for
about five years now and here are some
of the biggest lessons I’ve learned one
of the most key values that I learned
was best articulated by my friend Maddie
who started a program at Penn State
called Schreyer for women it’s a support
group for women in Penn State’s Honors
College and in my interview with Maddie
I asked her what advice would you give
to another student who was trying to
start a similar Club at their school and
she told me find your tribe and it’s
incredibly important to find people that
agree with you that agree with your
premise and want to work towards
improving it because if you want to go
fast go alone but if you want to go far
go together the sound of many voices
calling out for change is much more
powerful than one voice calling out for
change and you’d be surprised how much
farther you can go when you’re not the
one shouldering all the burden yourself
now in the fall of 2017 some white
supremacist groups on Penn State’s
campus started leaving out propaganda
and this coupled with Richard Spencer
attempting to requesting a space to
speak on our campus led my friends Tessa
Rae Sam and I to form the group no hate
Penn State and we wanted students to
have a peaceful way to resist the
message of white supremacy while still
creatively and proactively celebrating
the diversity and unity that makes a
place like a college campus great and
our vision was to have a concert but not
just any concert a concert where we have
many different kinds of performers and
we have visual art pieces displayed and
we have a co-created art piece where all
the attendees can come and work together
to create a monument of the unity and
diversity that our campus stands for we
actually for Martin Luther King Day 2018
just had our first event and through
planning that one of the things I
learned is that everyone has skills that
are useful for outreach I do stand-up
comedy at Penn State didn’t seem like it
would be useful but I have a friend that
I met through stand-up comedy his name
is Joe very talented Camille
you just ended up finishing a tour of
Pennsylvania when I told him about the
concert we were doing he told me he’d be
more than happy to be one of the
performers at it through doing stand-up
I also met a very excellent painter Anna
who was gracious enough to allow us to
use some of her paintings to set up the
atmosphere we were trying to for this
concert um we met my friend Sam who was
planning it with us in know hey Penn
State is a keyboard player for a local
band Doppler Poppins and through his
connections in the music scene of State
College we were able to get
well-respected local musicians roschmann
Aurora and Eric Ian farmer to also play
at this concert and donate their time we
used our connections to contact local
groups like Eko action and students for
a better politics and the Center for
women’s rights and we held a diversity
Expo where students could come and learn
about civic organizations in their area
so that they could make sure that they
were helping to better the State College
community outside of just attending this
one event we enlisted the help of a
filmmaker Olivia who’s very very
talented and helped us document the
event so we would have evidence of what
we created together and show other
people that weren’t able to make it to
the event and one of the best
connections we made was with a woman
Elaine who owns a local coffee shop and
cafe called Webster’s and she was
gracious enough to allow us to use her
space at Webster’s for three hours on
Martin Luther King Day absolutely free
and thanks to all of the effort and
energy and time that everyone put into
this event we were able to have 250
people come through our event in the
three hours that we held this on Martin
Luther King Day and another thing I
learned through through planning this is
that plans change there they’re not
permanent our initial plan was to have
our Martin Luther King Day concert
outside shortly afterwards we realized
that Martin Luther King Day is in
January and we are in central
Pennsylvania
that is not going to work but plans
aren’t permanent there they’re
changeable and they’re malleable just
make sure you’re working at it a lot of
people are afraid to get into advocacy
because they don’t know where to start
and they don’t think they have the
skills that are necessary but you really
just have to jump in feet first I mean
through doing equal opportunities for
students I learned how to conduct
interviews I learned how to record and
edit videos I learned how to run a
website and about two years later we
have more than 90 videos up if you just
dive in the skills will come now I don’t
want to make this sound like it’s easy
because it’s not it’s a very very
difficult process there’s a lot of time
and energy involved and you will reach
out to a lot of people who will disagree
with your message entirely and you will
run into a lot of bureaucratic
roadblocks but it is necessary to push
through it because the end result is
worth it and I like to remind people
that the race towards justice isn’t a
sprint it isn’t even a marathon I
consider it a relay race like when you
think about it
Brown didn’t fight to toe Piku Board of
Education for himself he did it so that
his daughter could go to a school that
wasn’t separate but equal’ you have to
make sure that you’re pushing the bar as
forward as you can for the next
generation so I like to think that I do
the work that I do is that another
epileptic student that’s still in high
school can take AP calculus without
having to go to the hospital every other
day and honestly every time I start an
event I learned one new thing I did that
worked
and the about three that didn’t but I
can say that every event I’ve done and
continue to do improves on the last one
and that’s that’s truly the key here and
there really is an incredible power in
student advocacy and the more people
take it up we can make sure that we
leave our schools our campuses and our
cities better than we found them before
thank you
[Applause]
Penn State University in 2015 I went to
Staunton college preparatory school in
Jacksonville Florida
it’s a highly ranked IB high school it
ranks top 10 in Newsweek for national
high schools and it has every year since
roughly 1990 also relevant piece of
information I am a photosensitive
epileptic
I have seizures that are caused in part
by flashing lights and I’ve had these
seizures most of my life my junior year
of high school I had an AP calculus
class and this class was in a room with
a very low ceiling and lights that would
flash in part because the building was
built in like 1860 so what keep expected
but um the lights would flash and it was
a high school block schedule so I was
taking this class every other day and it
would cause me to have seizures I would
go to class I’d have a seizure have to
go home go to the hospital and then deal
with the same thing two days later so
two weeks into the school year I
realized this wasn’t going to work so I
talked to my guidance counselor and I
asked if I could have the light bulbs
changed in the room or if the class
could be held in a different classroom
or if I could take the class online
literally any option that would prevent
me from having to physically deal with
the flashing lights and I was told by my
guidance counselor that Stanton didn’t
do accommodations and that if I needed
an accommodation I would have to leave
for the integrity of the program so I
was taken aback and I reached out to the
assistant principals and the principal
all the way up to the superintendent of
Duval County Public Schools who all told
me that Stanton does not do
accommodations and that for the
integrity of the program I would have to
leave the school and that’s when I
started advocating as a student and I
did the only thing I could do is I told
my own story to every met everyone that
would listen and to a lot of people that
wouldn’t and I ended up getting my own
story put into the Florida Times you
in part because the school
administrators were so adamant in the
idea of not doing accommodations that
they frequently put in writing that for
the sake of the school and the integrity
of the program I would have to leave
because of my disability and when my
article first hit Florida times-union
the reactions fell into one of two camps
the first camp told me that Stanton
doesn’t accommodate and that if I needed
an accommodation I would have to adjust
or move on and the second camp was many
many students and parents who I had to
talk to before who came to me and told
me that they experienced similar issues
not just at Stanton but at other high
schools in Duval County and they didn’t
speak out about it because they were
afraid of facing intense backlash so
this led me to realize how important it
is to educate people on educational
issues and rights and education and that
led me to found my website equal
opportunities for students equal
opportunities for students is a blog
that does text posts and video
interviews and what we do is we have two
purposes one is to educate people on
educational laws and educational rights
and teach people about educational
resources so options that you might not
have known you had beforehand and laws
you might not have known were in place
before because I experienced many many
people who didn’t know that disability
discrimination was covered under the
Americans with Disabilities Act and the
individual the I DEA that didn’t know
that these laws were in place and the
second is to allow students and parents
to tell their story in education to
verbalize when they have experienced
discrimination and not just so that they
can hopefully reach people who can help
them but also to show principals and
teachers and college presidents that
these issues do still happen on our
campuses and not just issues of
disability discrimination racial
discrimination sexual assault sexual
harassment gender discrimination
discrimination based on sexual
orientation these things do happen at
simple
to shed a light on it and I have been
advocating as a student been
participating in student advocacy for
about five years now and here are some
of the biggest lessons I’ve learned one
of the most key values that I learned
was best articulated by my friend Maddie
who started a program at Penn State
called Schreyer for women it’s a support
group for women in Penn State’s Honors
College and in my interview with Maddie
I asked her what advice would you give
to another student who was trying to
start a similar Club at their school and
she told me find your tribe and it’s
incredibly important to find people that
agree with you that agree with your
premise and want to work towards
improving it because if you want to go
fast go alone but if you want to go far
go together the sound of many voices
calling out for change is much more
powerful than one voice calling out for
change and you’d be surprised how much
farther you can go when you’re not the
one shouldering all the burden yourself
now in the fall of 2017 some white
supremacist groups on Penn State’s
campus started leaving out propaganda
and this coupled with Richard Spencer
attempting to requesting a space to
speak on our campus led my friends Tessa
Rae Sam and I to form the group no hate
Penn State and we wanted students to
have a peaceful way to resist the
message of white supremacy while still
creatively and proactively celebrating
the diversity and unity that makes a
place like a college campus great and
our vision was to have a concert but not
just any concert a concert where we have
many different kinds of performers and
we have visual art pieces displayed and
we have a co-created art piece where all
the attendees can come and work together
to create a monument of the unity and
diversity that our campus stands for we
actually for Martin Luther King Day 2018
just had our first event and through
planning that one of the things I
learned is that everyone has skills that
are useful for outreach I do stand-up
comedy at Penn State didn’t seem like it
would be useful but I have a friend that
I met through stand-up comedy his name
is Joe very talented Camille
you just ended up finishing a tour of
Pennsylvania when I told him about the
concert we were doing he told me he’d be
more than happy to be one of the
performers at it through doing stand-up
I also met a very excellent painter Anna
who was gracious enough to allow us to
use some of her paintings to set up the
atmosphere we were trying to for this
concert um we met my friend Sam who was
planning it with us in know hey Penn
State is a keyboard player for a local
band Doppler Poppins and through his
connections in the music scene of State
College we were able to get
well-respected local musicians roschmann
Aurora and Eric Ian farmer to also play
at this concert and donate their time we
used our connections to contact local
groups like Eko action and students for
a better politics and the Center for
women’s rights and we held a diversity
Expo where students could come and learn
about civic organizations in their area
so that they could make sure that they
were helping to better the State College
community outside of just attending this
one event we enlisted the help of a
filmmaker Olivia who’s very very
talented and helped us document the
event so we would have evidence of what
we created together and show other
people that weren’t able to make it to
the event and one of the best
connections we made was with a woman
Elaine who owns a local coffee shop and
cafe called Webster’s and she was
gracious enough to allow us to use her
space at Webster’s for three hours on
Martin Luther King Day absolutely free
and thanks to all of the effort and
energy and time that everyone put into
this event we were able to have 250
people come through our event in the
three hours that we held this on Martin
Luther King Day and another thing I
learned through through planning this is
that plans change there they’re not
permanent our initial plan was to have
our Martin Luther King Day concert
outside shortly afterwards we realized
that Martin Luther King Day is in
January and we are in central
Pennsylvania
that is not going to work but plans
aren’t permanent there they’re
changeable and they’re malleable just
make sure you’re working at it a lot of
people are afraid to get into advocacy
because they don’t know where to start
and they don’t think they have the
skills that are necessary but you really
just have to jump in feet first I mean
through doing equal opportunities for
students I learned how to conduct
interviews I learned how to record and
edit videos I learned how to run a
website and about two years later we
have more than 90 videos up if you just
dive in the skills will come now I don’t
want to make this sound like it’s easy
because it’s not it’s a very very
difficult process there’s a lot of time
and energy involved and you will reach
out to a lot of people who will disagree
with your message entirely and you will
run into a lot of bureaucratic
roadblocks but it is necessary to push
through it because the end result is
worth it and I like to remind people
that the race towards justice isn’t a
sprint it isn’t even a marathon I
consider it a relay race like when you
think about it
Brown didn’t fight to toe Piku Board of
Education for himself he did it so that
his daughter could go to a school that
wasn’t separate but equal’ you have to
make sure that you’re pushing the bar as
forward as you can for the next
generation so I like to think that I do
the work that I do is that another
epileptic student that’s still in high
school can take AP calculus without
having to go to the hospital every other
day and honestly every time I start an
event I learned one new thing I did that
worked
and the about three that didn’t but I
can say that every event I’ve done and
continue to do improves on the last one
and that’s that’s truly the key here and
there really is an incredible power in
student advocacy and the more people
take it up we can make sure that we
leave our schools our campuses and our
cities better than we found them before
thank you
[Applause]
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