A group of three St. Pius X High School graduates and three Seckman High School graduates were among several students at the University of Missouri in Columbia who recently received an award for revitalizing a student organization that advocates for people with disabilities.
St. Pius 2014 graduate Gabrielle Vest, now a student at Mizzou, said she found information about a student organization at the university called the Mizzou Unity Coalition that worked to help people with disabilities and contacted the adviser about joining.
She found out the organization had become inactive, but the adviser encouraged her to get it off the ground again.
“I told them I’d try to take it on,” said Vest of Pevely.
She asked her friends and fellow 2014 St. Pius graduates Allison Romano of Imperial and Christopher Filer of Festus, who also are Mizzou students, to help her.
“They were gung-ho about it,” Vest said.
Those three students were all friends with Courtney Harris of Imperial, a 2014 Seckman High graduate and Mizzou student, and asked her to help, too. Then, she asked fellow 2014 Seckman High graduates and Mizzou students Erin Marty of Imperial and Brianna Strieker of Imperial to join in.
All the students had been involved with Student Council at their high schools and through those organizations, had worked with students with special needs, Vest said.
All six of them, along with two other Mizzou students, now serve on the Unity Coalition’s executive committee, and Vest is the president.
The organization held two big events over the past school year, she said.
One was the Integrating Tigers Accessibility Fair, which was held in April and featured activities to raise awareness about people with disabilities, as well as vendors who provide services and products for people with disabilities, Marty said.
“We had those who attended the fair sign a poster to pledge to view disability as just another form of diversity,” Vest added.
More than 1,000 people attended the fair, Marty said.
“It was very successful, much bigger than I imagined it would be this first year, and we’re very proud of that,” Vest said.
A few weeks later, the group held an Accessibility Walk and had university administrators walk the campus to look at areas that are difficult for people with disabilities to access, as well as areas that work well, Vest said.
The organization got an award, a Chancellor’s Excellence Award honorable mention, on April 16 for most-improved student organization, Marty said.
All six students will be juniors next school year.
Vest and Romano are studying nursing; Filer is studying communications and political science; Harris, biochemistry; Marty, interior design; and Strieker, occupational therapy.
