The bright Tuesday morning sky has shed the heavy gray coat of winter, and patches of blue are beginning to show.

However, Vice President for Student Affairs Thomas Hill can see none of it.

As students walk by, they stare at first as they see the long white cane slapping again and again against the pavement near Marston Hall, but then smile as they see the wide black sleeping mask covering Hill’s eyes. Hill can’t see any of them, either, and it comes as a surprise when his two guides talk about the reaction he’s getting from onlookers.

“A lot of times, that’s one of the hardest things for people with disabilities to get used to,” says Katie Gidlewski, sophomore in chemical engineering and one of the two students sent to help Hill as he makes his way blindly across campus.

Hill has been struck with a sudden case of blindness as part of a program called “Step Into My World.” Sponsored by the Alliance for Disability Awareness, the program is intended to change the perceptions of disability among administrators and faculty by recreating for them how it feels to be with a disability. The event’s organizers say they hope to spread awareness of the difficulties of Iowa State’s handicapped students.

More than once, Hill speaks of the sensation of helplessness he feels, depending on the two guides to direct him in the right places, to tell him when there are steps or a door in his path.

“That’s one thing that’s become very clear to me, how dependent you become,” he says later. “And it would scare me to know that a person with disabilities is around a mean-spirited person.”

Hill was not the only one who walked in the shoes of a blind person. As Vice President for Business and Finance Warren Madden made his way tentatively down the hall of his office, President Gregory Geoffroy had successfully navigated the long stairwell from the second floor of Beardshear Hall to the first, and back up again.

They meet awkwardly in Madden’s office, their canes, on loan from student services, slapping against each other as the men move forward for a handshake.

“Have you been down the stairs yet?” Geoffroy asks Madden.

“No.”

“Well, it’s fun,” Geoffroy says sardonically.

It’s tiring, Geoffroy says, to move without sight. Working the cane to find his way around requires total concentration, and many times, he says, he finds himself disoriented.

“I can really see how you’d get a sense of feeling totally lost,” he says. “It would be very challenging.”

The event is the brainchild of Katie Blummer, senior in aerospace engineering, who lives with a genetic disability that manifested itself during her freshman year of high school. Blummer’s disease, fibrous dysplasia, causes her bones to weaken, making her extremely vulnerable to injury.

“I was a fairly active kid,” she says. “And then the doctor told me, ‘Katie, you can’t run. If you run, your legs will shatter.'”

Blummer, though, says she could not be easily discouraged, and now has many mementos to show for it.

In the past 10 years, she’s had eight surgeries. She now lives with 16 screws, nine plates, a pin, a rod and four or five bone grafts.

With the program, she says, she hopes to raise awareness of the difficulties suffered day-to-day by the disabled.

If Hill’s experience is any indicator, she’s been successful. Before securing the blindfold, Hill estimated Iowa State’s handicap accessibility was midway between completely non-accessible and totally accessible. Afterwards, he says his perception has changed a bit.

“I guess I’m not as good at making that assessment because I was with [my guides],” he says.

“If they were not there, my assessment would probably have been a lot worse.”

“I would still rate us somewhere in between, but if I’d been doing this by myself, I’d probably have a different assessment.”

This correction was printed on April 19, 2004:

Due to reporting errors, the April 14 article “Through my eyes” incorrectly stated the “Step Into My World” event was sponsored by the Alliance for Disability Awareness. The University Committee on Disabilities was the sponsor, with support from the Alliance for Disability Awareness and Alpha Sigma Kappa. Also, a photo cutline incorrectly stated Provost Ben Allen participated in the Tuesday event. Allen has not yet participated. The Daily regrets these errors.