Somewhere between political rallies and college curriculums, cruelty became a virtue. Maybe it started when showing basic human decency was deemed “snowflake behavior.” Maybe it trickled down from the president’s podium to the professor’s desk, where the syllabus now doubles as a shield against basic humanity. Either way, the message has landed: compassion has an expiration date.
You can feel this shift everywhere — in classrooms, in workplaces and in the ways people talk to each other online. Instead of patience, there’s suspicion. Instead of generosity, there’s judgment. We have built a culture that treats compassion like a scarce commodity, something to ration than offer freely. And once that mindset takes hold, it doesn’t stay contained. It seeps into institutions that should know better. Colleges, with all their rhetoric about growth and understanding, have not been immune to this erosion of empathy.
This semester, I learned that the hard way. I have spent the past few months juggling chronic back pain, coursework and the occasional existential crisis that comes with trying to exist in a system built for the able-bodied. I told one of my professors about my health issues, hoping for some understanding. At first, he seemed to get it and was even willing to accommodate. Then, as deadlines approached, that empathy dissolved faster than ice on asphalt at high noon.
When I misunderstood the submission process for my midterm project, I didn’t get a conversation — I got reprimanded. I was told I had made a “conscious effort” not to submit my work. That was his way of telling me that I was intentionally neglecting my responsibilities as a student. I tried explaining again — the confusion, the pain, the effort — but once compassion curdles, there’s no saving it. The tone shifted from supportive to scolding. Suddenly, my pain wasn’t part of the picture; only my failure to fit the schedule.
Unfortunately, my experience is not uncommon. Bureaucracies love rules more than people. The same culture that sneers at “entitlement” in politics thrives in classrooms, where empathy ends at the edge of the syllabus. Academia, for all its think pieces about inclusion, still worships productivity. Professors who pride themselves on critical thinking cannot seem to fathom that “hard work” might look different when your spine feels like it’s been replaced with barbed wire.
Based on its mission statement, Las Positas claims to provide “an inclusive, learning-centered, equity-focused environment.” However, not everyone within the college community embraces this philosophy. Or truly believes in providing a genuinely inclusive environment for their students. It seems the mission statement is just an empty platitude rather than an actionable value system.
While ableism in academic environments is often discussed abstractly, the patterns are painfully concrete. Research on faculty attitudes toward students with disabilities has been sounding alarms for years. Studies consistently show that students with chronic illnesses or invisible disabilities face more skepticism, more hoops and more disbelief than their able-bodied peers.
One study from the Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability found that faculty members were significantly less willing to accommodate students with non-visible disabilities — not because accommodations were unreasonable, but because they doubted the legitimacy of the disability itself.
Federal law — the ADA and Section 504 — technically protects students with disabilities, but the enforcement structure is a mess. Most compliance is left to overextended campus disability centers, meaning the quality of support depends more on local culture and individual personalities than on actual policy. In other words, disability rights in higher education function like an honor system. And we all know how well those go.
Students with disabilities describe needing to “prove” their pain through constant documentation and justification, which turns accessibility into an obstacle course rather than a support system.
These structural failures have measurable academic consequences. Students with chronic health conditions have higher rates of course withdrawal, incomplete grades and delayed graduation.
Not because they lack ability, but because the system is designed around the assumption that everyone learns, suffers and produces the same way. In practice, the very institutions that champion “equity” often replicate the same skepticism and hostility that people with disabilities encounter everywhere else.
And maybe that’s the real trickle-down legacy of Trump’s America: cruelty disguised as policy. We have normalized dismissiveness as strength. For Trump, it looks like mocking reporters with disabilities. In academia, it looks like professors punishing you for not performing to their satisfaction. Both thrive on the same rot — that acknowledging someone’s pain is a moral weakness.
True accessibility doesn’t require lowering standards, it requires raising empathy. It’s not about special treatment, it’s about fairness that accounts for reality. Chronic pain doesn’t care about deadlines. It doesn’t pause for midterms or yield to grading rubrics. But academia still expects students to function like machines — and calls it “rigor” when they collapse trying.
I didn’t withdraw from that course because I couldn’t handle the work. I withdrew because I refuse to stay in an environment where cruelty is confused with professionalism. I didn’t want an A — I wanted dignity.
Enduring a disability that impacts one’s ability to function is excruciating enough. Professors making students feel inadequate is an unnecessary roadblock on top of dealing with other daily stressors. It is important for administrators and faculty to know that the well-being of individuals should be a priority over meeting arbitrary deadlines. For college campuses to truly provide an “inclusive environment,” they must stop worshipping productivity.
A few missing assignments and extended deadlines may be a temporary inconvenience. However, living with a disability is a source of constant physical and mental anguish.
Ableism in academia isn’t new, but it’s thriving in the same ecosystem that made cruelty fashionable. The same mindset that once called compassion “weakness” now hides behind tenure and templates. And until empathy stops being optional, colleges and universities will keep producing educated people who have no capacity for kindness.
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TOP PHOTO: Studies consistently show that students with chronic illnesses or invisible disabilities face more skepticism than their able-bodied peers. A study from the Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability found that faculty members were significantly less willing to accommodate students with non-visible disabilities. (Illustration by Mel Llamas/Special to the Express)
Sabrina Hossain is the Opinions Editor for The Express. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter @WritersBlock678.
