Disability is a fact of life; it is not rare or marginal. One in four adults in the United States has a disability. That means a significant number of students on campus navigate their days as people with disabilities, carrying a lived identity with a rich culture and history. Yet, they continue to be met with euphemisms to describe their lived experience.

USC prides itself on being an academic institution built on integrity, community, well-being and accountability. When the topic shifts to disability, however, the tone changes and energy softens. People switch to careful, sugarcoated vocabulary as if “disabled” is a word that needs padding. The pause is always a giveaway.

People are not protecting the disability community. They are actually protecting their own comfort.

This is about who is treated as part of a real community with power versus framed as fragile, overlooked or just a “sensitive topic.” When people talk about other marginalized communities, such as race, gender or class, students are trained to name power plainly. We are encouraged to examine structures and systems rather than the sentiment of our words. 

When it comes to disability, people often reach for softening phrases such as “special needs” or “differently abled.” I see this level of conversation everywhere, even among people who are part of the disability community themselves. These words sound polite on the surface, but they signal a deeper, underlying issue. They imply that disability is emotional territory instead of a political identity.

I remember sitting in a lecture recently when the professor displayed a slide using the phrase “disability slash exceptionality.” The words landed like bright neon lights warning that disability was being handled like a delicate object.

At that moment, it gave the subtle vibe of “mobile independence throne” instead of simply saying wheelchair. The intention may have been kindness, but the outcome was avoidance. Refusal to speak the real word, “disabled,” creates distance instead of safety.

I think of the leaders of the disability rights movement who did not choose to use “special needs” or “differently abled” to describe their cause. They specifically used “disabled” because they knew that’s what they were and refused to sugarcoat their identity for anyone else’s comfort.

Across campus, I’ve seen students and staff sitting in classrooms, leading organizations, holding knowledge and navigating systems that were not built with us in mind. I have heard firsthand how staff and faculty sometimes speak in hushed tones about disability, as if it is something awkward to mention. 

If USC wants to live the values it promotes, then disability has to be treated with the same seriousness as any other identity group shaped by power and exclusion.

That means no more whispering around the word, sanding off the edges to make the topic easier for nondisabled listeners, or inspirational side framing that reduces people with disabilities to mascots. Students need to hear disability being named loud and clear as a legitimate axis of justice.

Disability is not a tragedy or exceptional. It is a social identity with pride, culture, history and political force. It is tied to policy design, access to power in education, public spaces and leadership roles. Additionally, it includes those who participate in public life without being treated as an exception.

USC must normalize saying “disabled” across classrooms, in organizational meetings and through official communications and campus spaces without apology or tension in the room. Professors should not feel nervous naming disability, just like race or gender. Students should learn that disability is a community with presence, agency and analysis.

Such a shift alone would change the campus culture profoundly, and it starts how people with disabilities are seen and whether they are taken seriously as leaders.

We already have the justice vocabulary; however, the willingness to apply it to disability without shrinking the word is missing. No one in a justice-based curriculum should feel like disability must be edited into something cuter or safer. Justice is not soft. Justice is accurate.

USC can model something better if it chooses to speak plainly. It starts with language that treats disability as real. When we stop tiptoeing, we make room for a campus culture where students with disabilities are treated like a vital part of the intellectual and political community.

If we say dignity and justice belong to everyone, then disability also has to live in that sentence without pause.

Lilly Grossman is a social work graduate student writing about accessibility and campus culture in her column, “The Quiet Part,” which runs every other Thursday. She is also the diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility director at the Daily Trojan.