Autistic College student starts support/empowerment org

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Jennifer Partin was on her shift looking after children when she saw a young boy with autism grabbed and forced to make eye contact with another worker.

“I wanted to say something, but I was just a lowly respite worker,” she said. “Every now and then I get pessimistic, so what I try to do is just raise understanding.”

Partin, a psychology senior who was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in 2016, started doing so at UTD. She founded a student group called For Autistic Empowerment — the first of its kind on campus — that provides support for individuals with autism.

“On one hand, we want to create a community where you don’t have to worry about people judging you for being autistic,” she said. “The other side of the mission is to spread education about what autism is and what it’s like. There’s a tendency towards awareness raising. Awareness without education leads to fear and stigma.”

A 2012 study in the journal Pediatrics found that 34.7 percent of adolescents with ASD attended college and 55.1 percent were only employed within the first six years after high school