By Rachel Muir
GW senior Corbb O’Connor has landed internships on Capitol Hill and with MSNBC and public radio. He speaks Spanish fluently and has traveled around the world, including Argentina, Europe and New Zealand.
He’s also blind with very limited vision for a few feet beyond which "everything is extremely blurry." He gets around campus—and elsewhere—with the help of his trusted guide dog Phoenix.
A Chicago area native, Mr. O’Connor visited GW in high school on the recommendation of a counselor who said the University was “pretty good in basketball and had a great School of Media and Public Affairs.” As soon as he got off the Metro in Foggy Bottom, he knew he’d found the school for him. “I loved the campus and the city,” he says.
The decision to come to GW, while already made, became more financially feasible for his family when Mr. O’Connor received GW’s Barbara Jackman Zuckert Scholarship for visually impaired students. He also more recently received the University’s Mei Yuen Hoover Scholarship for students with disabilities.
Now a senior in GW's School of Media and Public Affairs (SMPA), Mr. O'Connor has an enviable resume for a college student that includes internships in then-Sen. Hillary Clinton’s office (he turned down a job in Barack Obama's Senate office for the Clinton opportunity), with MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, and with the public radio show Marketplace.
While he performed mostly “internly tasks” on Capitol Hill, he was able to pitch and produce some of his own ideas for MSNBC primetime segments and for Marketplace. This spring, he heads to NBC News' Washington Bureau where he’ll assist locally based correspondents whose reports air on the Nightly News with Brian Williams and the Today show. Mr. O’Connor, who is on track to graduate in December, hopes to stay in D.C. and pursue a career in radio journalism after earning his GW degree.
Mr. O’Connor credits SMPA’s mix of theory and practice with helping prepare him for the real world. He also praises the University for going above and beyond to accommodate students with disabilities. “GW is the best provider of services to people with disabilities that I have found in my college visits,” Mr. O’Connor says.
He calls GW Disability Support Services’ offerings—which include registration assistance, readers, exam accommodations and assistance with note taking—“very well customized, student-focused and as streamlined as possible.” Mr. O’Connor has also served on Disability Support Services Speakers Bureau, which is composed of students with disabilities who share their personal stories with GW classes, organizations and departments upon request.
“Lots of people make assumptions about us folks with disabilities,” he says. “Some people think that blind people need super-specific directions to get somewhere, that we only take taxis rather than Metro, and the list goes on, but I don't dwell on the misperceptions.
“I try to live my life just like anybody who isn't blind—both for my sanity and to change any misconceptions out there,” he says. “If people with disabilities live like everybody else and don't treat the accommodations that we need as extreme or life-altering, then the public will see that and treat us as we want to be treated—like anybody else without a disability.”