Autism Awareness Month: Find out more about what you can do
"Wired Like This" club an opportunity for the campus to better understand Autism
When someone thinks or talks about Autism, they generally are thinking about individuals in the younger generation, who are on the spectrum.
With the focus on the younger generation, we thought it would be a good idea to bring a little more of that scope to those who are getting ready to venture out into furthering educating themselves and finding careers later on in life. This is what brought us to create a club on campus, which is known as Wired Like This.
I first established the club, Wired Like This, with the help of my vice president, Pearson McIntire, the secretary, Kyra Moore, and our treasurer, Nick Mason. I am Lawrence Ray, the president of this new club. We all first established this club this past fall semester and now are planning a few fun and interesting events on campus.
This is to help our community to better understand and eliminate some negative personas that some people may have had when they have thought about Autism.
To help you better understand what Autism is, here is a quick definition: "Autism is a complex neurobehavioral condition that includes impairments in social interaction and developmental language and communication skills combined with rigid, repetitive behaviors. Because of the range of symptoms, this condition is now called autism spectrum disorder (ASD)" (Web MD).
Along with this clarification on what Autism is, there is a lot more information on what has been happening with Autism and its growth, in the past few years! For the most part, in our community and country, we have diagnosed an increasing number of individuals with Autism; says that about one in 88 children are diagnosed with Autism in 2012 and constantly increasing to about one in 42 boys and one in 189 girls.
The majority of these are being diagnosed at a younger and younger age, in order for those who are on the spectrum develop some skills that they may not be the strongest in. These individuals on the spectrum, grow and get ready to look at colleges or furthering education or career jobs, there are a lot of resources out there to help.
One of the biggest at the University would be the DRC, Disability Resource Center, and our University's Medical School's Speech and Hearing Center. At the DRC, there are many resources at your disposal and a lot of nice people, who are willing and eager to help.
With more and more universities and educational centers in our communities, getting better and better informed about what Autism is and more resources available to those on the spectrum, to better help develop certain skills for those on the spectrum and can help better acclimate to their specific careers and Universities.
With April being Autism Awareness Month, there will be multiple events and a speaker coming to campus. You can come, get involved, and learn more about what Autism is, along with a fun community.
This social event will help you and your fellow students get better involved in. As a University, we will be able to reach out to our fellow citizens in the community, to better help inform and get them involved in our local programs. Also, if you are interested in the learning more about us or want to get involved, feel free to contact us at our email address wired.like.this712@gmail.com .
