Community Voices Documentary Featured in Ashland’s Daily Tidings
May 20, 2011
Eliza's Story:
Ashland High School graduate films documentary about young lady with Down syndrome who was dropped from SOU course
When Chapman University filmmaking student Ruby Stocking graduated from Ashland High School in 2008, she had never met Eliza Schaaf, a classmate with Down syndrome.
Three years later, Schaaf's battle to attend a ceramics course at Ashland's Southern Oregon University became the topic of a documentary by Stocking and three other students at Chapman in Orange, Calif.
"Originally, going into the project we were hoping to make a film about SOU and its impact on Eliza having been withdrawn from the ceramics course," Stocking said. "We just realized there was a greater story within the SOU clash with Eliza, that story being inclusion and whether or not someone who is disabled should be included in society or whether they should be separated."
The documentary, which will be screened at 6 p.m. Wednesday, June 1, at Ashland High School's Mountain Avenue Theater, has been nominated for the university's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts Cecil Award for Best Documentary. It also will be entered into at least five film festivals.
Last fall, Schaaf enrolled in a college-level ceramics class as a nonadmitted student at SOU. Nonadmitted students may enroll in up to eight credits of classes but don't earn credit toward a degree. Midway through, the SOU administration decided to drop Schaaf from the class.
The university said Schaaf required excessive supervision and one-on-one attention that limited the instructor's ability to interact with the rest of the class. Schaaf's classmates signed a petition stating that Schaaf did not interfere with their ability to learn and asking that she be reinstated.
Schaaf's family has appealed the decision to the Oregon University System, which so far has upheld it.
Stocking heard about the story from a friend on Facebook around the time when she and classmates Bobby Moser, James Parker and Virginia Thomasi were looking for a topic on which to make a documentary for their Chapman class called Community Voices.
The documentary project was expected to highlight a social justice issue for an Orange County organization. The Dhont Family Foundation funds the student-made documentaries each year.
