Interview with Office of Student Affairs Director Yelena Sardaryan

March is a noteworthy month on so many levels in Kurdistan, and it is noteworthy in the United States for being National Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month, as proclaimed by President Ronald Reagan in 1987. At the American University of Kurdistan (AUK), the Office of Student Affairs, under the leadership of Director Yelena Sardaryan, is a safe space for students with disabilities, physical or mental, permanent or temporary. It is likewise a safe space for students seeking counseling, whether for academic or non-academic challenges. I, as AUK’s Content Writer, was eager to hear more about the Access & Disability Services Center and Counseling Services at the Office of Student Affairs. So, I sat down with Yelena Sardaryan for a lengthy conversation, summarized below, focused on the support she is providing for AUK students. She is able to give this support through the United States Department of State Grant titled “Support for American-Style Higher Education in Iraq,” which financed the Access & Disability Services Center and the acquisition of Anthology’s Beacon software.

My talk with Ms. Sardaryan had a clear “main idea,” which she phrased thus: “We all have mental health, and it needs to be good for us to function and fulfill our potential.” She has observed that there is still “too much stigma” around mental health in the Kurdistan Region, and she emphasized that within the Access & Disabilities Services Center there is “100% confidentiality,” making it a sanctuary for the articulation of previously unspoken concerns. To chip away at persistent stigma, Ms. Sardaryan is committed to working with the faculty and staff of AUK, as well as its student body, to increase awareness about mental health. She assured me that every effort will be made to provide reasonable accommodations, thereby ensuring equitable access to education at the American University of Kurdistan.

I asked Yelena Sardaryan to make fine distinctions of various sorts during our conversation. For example, I asked her for her views on the term “handicap,” which some still use as a synonym for “disability.” She herself never uses the term “handicap,” which she says connotes that the person is “broken” and it is “the end.” She sticks to using the term “people with disabilities.” I agree with her perspective, and I would add that an individual in whom, on account of a disability, “something is missing” may not have always been missing that “something” and may, through training and encouragement, figure out how to interface with the world as if that “something” is not missing at all. I also sought from her a distinction between “Access and Disability Services” and “Counseling Services.” She stated that the two services are meant to supplement each other, each in their own ways contributing to the meeting of student needs through an individualized approach.

Though I am not suffering from any particular difficulties at AUK, my conversation with Yelena Sardaryan took on the feel of a counseling session in its own right. It should come as no surprise that she is adept at helping people drop their inhibitions and redefine their limitations, because she has more than two decades of training and experience as a psychologist. Her own education includes both a BA and an MA in Psychology and an additional MA in Public Health, and I found that we share common ground as educators: Ms. Sardaryan was a Special Education teacher, and I, too, in what now feels like a past life, was a Special Education teacher. I reached the stage of comfort at which I could tell her, unreservedly, that I have a disability myself: epilepsy. I have had epileptic seizures in my life, and the threat of another one does determine some of my actions, but my status as a person with epilepsy is rarely a preoccupation for me these days. She tried to reassure me right after my voluntary disclosure, saying, “Brilliant people have epilepsy.” She named the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky as a famous epileptic, and I then spoke on how the Roman general and statesman Julius Caesar is himself believed to have had epilepsy. Ms. Sardaryan ended up articulating my exact sentiments on having epilepsy, in one of her general statements applying to all disabilities: “Disability is not the end. It is just a circumstance you have to keep in mind.”

The Access and Disability Services and Counseling Services provided in AUK’s Office of Student Affairs have the same goal as education itself: guiding a person to reach his or her full potential. In my time as a Special Education teacher, I learned of “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.” At the top of this pyramid, only reachable for those who have already satisfied the more fundamental needs of “physiology,” “safety,” “love/belonging,” and “esteem,” lies “self-actualization.” This “self-actualization” characterizes the most pleasant domestic situations, the finest academic courses, and the most gratifying forms of employment, i.e., settings allowing people to develop and express themselves maximally. Those with disabilities or seeking counseling may temporarily need some assistance to move up the pyramid, but, with adequate time and effort, the summit should be reachable for them, as well. As Ms. Sardaryan likes to put it: “The disability does not define the person; the person does.” She added, “Hopefully, we will get to the point where people with disabilities can stand up and talk openly about their conditions, to be role models and to challenge the general population.”

I felt invigorated by my conversation with Yelena Sardaryan. Disclosing my own disability to her was painless in the thoroughly supportive environment she has built up around herself, and she inspired me to disclose it in this more public format, in fact. Any and all AUK students who find themselves experiencing social-emotional challenges, irrespective of the presence or absence of a diagnosed disability, would do well to start their own invigorating, potentially life-changing conversations with Yelena Sardaryan in the Office of Student Affairs.