Pi Kappa Phi holds disability dinner
Banquet attendees were given an imitation disability during the dinner.
Published Sept. 13, 2005
A group of MU fraternity members tried to experience life as a person with a disability does during a banquet on Friday night.
Some pretended they were mute; others acted as if they were blind. Some restricted their hands with socks. Others spoke in three- or five-letter words.
Pi Kappa Phi fraternity held an Empathy Training Dinner to raise awareness and funds for Push America, the fraternity's national philanthropic organization dedicated to serving people with disabilities.
Pi Kappa Phi chapters organize dinners across the country. Each person attending the dinner is given a disability to simulate to allow people to experience the challenge that often accompanies the disability when completing everyday tasks, according to the Push America Web site.
According to the Web site, the dinner begins with each person assigned to a temporary disability as he or she arrives at the banquet.
The participant must act with the disability until told otherwise. They eat dinner and upon the conclusion of the main course, the guests are allowed to "turn off" their disabilities.
The participants then are asked to talk about their experiences.
Event organizer Brad Collier said Push America has three ideals: to raise funds, volunteer and create awareness for people with disabilities.
Pi Kappa Phi member Greg Chase, a commissioner on the city of Columbia's Disabilities Commission, said the dinner is a way to get people without disabilities to understand how difficult everyday tasks are for people who do have them.
The dinner stressed the importance of empathy, a sense of shared experience and understanding of another's situation, versus sympathy, Chase said.
"We had a lot of fun with it," Collier said. "And the point hit home for most people."
Freshman Pat Foley said the idea of the dinner was "appalling." Foley has a twin brother with cerebral palsy, and said he believes an Empathy Training Dinner does not, in any way, show what it is like to have a disability.
"It sounds like they were poking fun at people with disabilities, which is the most ruthless and uncaring action anyone can take," Foley said.
Collier said everyone took the event seriously and there was absolutely no mocking involved in the dinner. He said participants now have a greater understanding and awareness about how difficult activities are for people with disabilities.
Foley said organizers should have held a presentation or handed out flyers in order to create awareness instead of organizing an event that could be views as offensive or insensitive.
"I will never understand what it's like to have a disability, but I feel like I have a small idea of the challenges that people with disabilities have to face on a daily basis after the dinner," Chase said.
Friday's dinner raised $100 for the organization as well as an "increased awareness and opening a dialogue for disabilities," Chase said.