Students react to empathy dinner
Pi Kapp event focuses on disabilities

By LaNasha Houze
Staff Reporter

Fort Worth officials, TCU administration, staff and students gathered at the second Pi Kappa Phi Empathy Dinner Monday night, the last event in the fraternity’s PUSH philanthropy week.

Brian Casebolt, director of the philanthropy event, said the event was held to raise awareness and to break down the stereotypes of individuals within the TCU community about people with disabilities.

“This event is not a fundraiser,” Casebolt said. “Instead, it is to raise awareness. People with disabilities don’t want you to sympathize with them. If we can get the participants to feel and understand this then we have accomplished our goal at the dinner.”

Before entering the banquet room, participants were assigned a disability where they were either blindfolded, placed in a wheelchair, assigned a speech impediment or had all their fingers taped together to limit their dexterity.

Casebolt said initially participants think the disability is trivial until they are required to get their meal in the buffet line.

“There is usually a learning curve,” Casebolt said. “First people think it is fun. Then they become frustrated (during meal), and finally they learn to adapt to their disability.”

Casebolt said the intense conversation began to die down as participants prepared to undergo the task of eating their dinner.

Susan Adams, associate vice chancellor and dean of Campus Life, said it was a coincidence that she was assigned cerebral palsy since arthritis, which limits the use of your hands, runs in her family.

“Right now I am thinking that I don’t want to even get in the (buffet) line,” said Adams. “This feels very awkward.”

Bob Bolen, senior advisor to the chancellor, said he believed his simulated disability of cerebral palsy was not as difficult to adjust to as the other simulated disabilities.

“Of course, I spilled a little bit of lasagna down my shirt during the meal,” Bolen said. “You have to be careful and slow down during the meal. At least I had partial use of my hands; if you are blind, you have no use of your eyes at all.”

Before the dinner, Chancellor Michael Ferrari said he was interested in how he would be able to hold a conversation limited to words with only five letters.
When asked how difficult conversation was during the simulation Ferrari responded, “Very hard. Know only few words. More slow.”

Once the clocked ticked past the 30-minute mark and participants were allowed to remove their disability, the noise level in the banquet room increased. Adams said some participants clapped, smiled and even gave sighs of relief.

After removing her disability, Adams said that it was just the little things that people may take for granted.

“It was not an enjoyable task to eat,” Adams said, “It’s a chore. (The simulation) makes you realize how blessed you are.”

Ferrari said it was heart warming that students initiated the event instead of the TCU administration.

“I hope that this event has a lingering effect on the students,” Ferrari said. “Going through this exercise for two hours is significantly different than having this disability for a lifetime.”

LaNasha Houze
l.d.houze@student.tcu.edu