Colorado College has a thriving relationship with the Colorado Special Olympics. CC Tiger Athletics hosts a Special Olympics Field Day every year, with every varsity sports team running accessible activities containing elements of their sport. The men’s soccer team plays an annual game with the Switchbacks Unified soccer team. There is even a dedicated CC Special Olympics club, where students participate in Unified soccer, bowling, basketball and run other campus-wide events.
From what I have observed, the CC student population appreciates the Special Olympics’ work, and many students are passionate about volunteering with the organization to directly impact the lives of disabled people. Athletics can be an amazing avenue for improving mental well-being, social skills and resilience. Thus, the Special Olympics’ services are generally viewed as a good nonprofit working to improve disabled people’s self-efficacy and societal standing.
However, as an autistic student-athlete, I do not entirely agree with the Special Olympics’ methodologies. Despite its intended mission to empower and integrate disabled people through sport, I believe that the Special Olympics reinforces neurotypical people’s attitudes of infantilization through its inherent segregation. Additionally, the structure of their events does not allow disabled people to reap the benefits that athletics can provide them.
Don’t get me wrong, I love that our student community has become so involved in disability advocacy, especially in the realm of athletics. I have volunteered at many Special Olympics events with the varsity swim & dive team, watching my teammates demonstrate compassion and genuine enjoyment as they interact with disabled athletes. I also recognize that the Special Olympics can promote genuine good. I have seen firsthand how their events can improve disabled people’s self-confidence through play. Nevertheless, I am not fully on board with how the Special Olympics portrays itself and designs its sporting programs.
Let’s start with the organization’s name: Special Olympics. In a previous article that I wrote about terms describing developmentally disabled people, I detailed my frustrations with the term ‘special.’ Referring to disabled people as having special needs minimizes acknowledgment of disability, side-stepping genuine discussions about disabled people’s lived experiences. Furthermore, designating disabled people as ‘special’ implies that we are categorically different from neurotypical people, framing our existence as courageous rather than natural.
Being relegated to ‘special education’ programs and being called ‘special’ by teachers and administrators made me feel ashamed of my disability. I felt like I did not deserve the same level of respect as my peers, which made me feel like I needed to hide being autistic to have even a chance of being viewed as ‘normal.’ Calling disabled people ‘special’ frames their daily lives as inspiring, while simultaneously stigmatizing disability as outside of the norm.
This trend is clearly demonstrated in the news articles highlighting the Special Olympics events. To this day, Special Olympics athletes are generally depicted as ‘feel-good’ stories, not as full people and athletes. The Special Olympics competitions are depicted as uplifting events demonstrating inclusion, determination and community, places where disabled people can be themselves. Obviously, highlighting disability inclusion is a must for any adaptive sports program. However, if the Special Olympics truly wishes to integrate disabled people into the world of athletics, it must change how volunteers and news outlets view athletes’ participation.
Even the Special Olympics themselves rely on inspirational marketing to advertise themselves to the general public. In many promotional videos, sappy music plays in the background as the Special Olympics athletes compete in their events, interspersed with emotional comments from parents about how proud they are of their ‘precious babies.’ One of their recent campaigns further champions the word ‘special,’ pushing to reclaim the word and explore its power. These advertising campaigns affirm neurotypical people’s mushy attitudes about disabled people, pushing narratives that simple participation is sufficient for inclusion.
When disabled athletes are not infantilized through blind praise, they are compared to neurotypical people’s poor sporting performances. For example, former President Barack Obama compared his bowling skills to “the Special Olympics or something” on the Jay Leno Show on March 19, 2009. Although he apologized the following day, he tried to make amends by inviting Special Olympics athletes to play sports at the White House and saying the Special Olympics is a great place that lets disabled people shine.
Even when trying to correct ableist behavior, people tend to view disabled people as disposable, and the Special Olympics’ segregation of disabled athletes does nothing to help this misconception. Instead of properly integrating disabled and able-bodied athletes, disabled people are the only true participants at the Special Olympics events, with able-bodied people only having a physical presence as volunteers and helpers. Additionally, while the Paralympics and Deaflympics include disabled people as key members of their administration, the Special Olympics simply allows disabled people to participate as athletes without significantly influencing the organization’s operations.
Furthermore, despite the Special Olympics claiming that Unified Sports breaks down stereotypes about disabled people, research indicates that it may do the exact opposite. Social interactions between disabled and able-bodied people at the Special Olympics events are usually short and surface-level, unlikely to blossom into long-term friendships. These types of casual interactions do not lead to a reduction in disability prejudice and are actually likely to reinforce negative stereotypes. My personal experiences at the Special Olympics support this conclusion, as my teammates only got to spend a few minutes with each disabled individual, leaving the experience without gaining any meaningful relationships and largely maintaining the same perspectives about disabled people as they had before the event.
Additionally, using day-of volunteers as ‘huggers’ at competitive events reinforces infantilization, treating disabled athletes like children who need to be comforted rather than competitors to be cheered for. ‘Huggers’ actively harm participants’ social skills development by requesting that volunteers model inappropriate touching of strangers, inhibiting one of the primary benefits that athletics provides for disabled people. Even volunteers with more sustained interactions with Special Olympics athletes, such as coaches and board members, often develop paternalistic relationships, placing disabled people in subservient positions and viewing themselves as ‘saviors.’ In essence, volunteers are being misused at Special Olympics events, inhibiting disabled people from experiencing the benefits that athletics can offer them and establishing inequitable connections.
All in all, the Special Olympics can be beneficial; disabled people greatly benefit from inclusive athletics. However, the organization’s execution of its goals leaves much to be desired. Volunteers are largely unable to form genuine relationships with disabled people, resulting in negligible or harmful impacts on neurotypical people’s perceptions of disability. The Special Olympics’ marketing relies too heavily on ‘inspiration porn,’ reinforcing otherization of disabled people through the category of ‘special’ and framing participants as childlike.
Despite the Paralympics also being a separate competition for disabled people, I have not criticized them in this manner because they better integrate disabled athletes into the sporting world. Instead of diverging their events from the outside world and framing them as purely for inclusion, the Paralympics allows their athletes to represent themselves and compete in a parallel capacity to able-bodied people, using inclusion as a means to an end, not the end itself.
Ultimately, I want to make it clear that I am not against the Special Olympics, and I definitely don’t want people to stop volunteering for adaptive sports programs. The methods by which the Special Olympics pursues its well-meaning goals are flawed, and understanding these flaws can lead to more beneficial individual and collective action. The next time you volunteer for a Special Olympics event, think about how you can resist the structural incapacities of the organization to provide genuine value to disabled people. Instead of treating participants like they are children, interact with them at the level they need, as you would with anyone else in your life. Creating an inclusive society for disabled people, including improving equity in athletics, involves tearing down barriers of segregation and appreciating disabled people for who they are.