PHOTO BY ZACH GARDNER | Staff Photographer
By KATRINA PENAFLOR Campus Life Editor
The Western Accessibility Awareness Month committee organized a seated volleyball game in the Health and Wellness Center Feb. 17.
WAAM, which was previously known as Disability Awareness Month, took place in October last year. The committee decided to move the event to February to allow more time to plan events for students to attend.
Rose Lethe, a junior applied mathematics major, is a WAAM committee member. She talked about wanting to organize, “what we thought students would want to see.”
Seated volleyball is “part of our lunch and learn series,” said Charisse Loughery, Western’s Student Conduct Coordinator and one of the event organizers. Another WAAM event is a weekly Instagram and Twitter challenge.
The rules of the game were similar to traditional volleyball except the court was made smaller and feet were allowed to slide underneath the net without penalty. Participant’s bodies also had to remain seated on the ground at all times.
The game brought a lot of attention from WAAM committee members, students, and gym-goers that all rotated in and out of the game.
Lethe said she had a lot of fun participating in seated volleyball and said it would be “great to have this at Western.”
Abby Luedman, a junior pre-ASL interpreting major enjoyed watching the game. She heard about it from one of her classes where she says her teacher has a box of activities for students: “this was one of them.”
Another attendee, senior and pre-ASL interpreting major Mylisa McGill, enjoyed watching a game like this for the first time: “I did not know what seated volleyball was,” McGill said.
WAAM events will be continuing throughout February and the beginning of March. Upcoming programs of WAAM include a lunch and learn series titled “OMG! There’s a Deaf/Hard of Hearing Person in the Room,” Monday, Feb. 23 from 12 to 1 p.m. in the Willamette room, and WaWa, a Deaf rapper performing in ITC room 211 at 7 p.m., March 13.
