Posted at 12:22 a.m. 3/7/2010

The casual and derogatory use of one word has always offended freshman Megan McKeown. The public communications major signed a petition in Hilltop Wednesday night to pledge to remove the word “retarded” from her vernacular and make it known to others that using the term in a derogatory fashion is not ok.

“I signed it because I have a brother with Down syndrome,” McKeown said. “In middle school, I wasn’t strong enough to stand up, but it offended me. Now that I’m in college, I can stand up.”

Freshman Sarah Hof also took the pledge.

“I just think it’s really offensive,” she said. “I don’t use ‘retarded.’ I don’t use ‘gay.'”

The “Spread the Word to End the Word” campaign sponsored by the UW-Eau Claire chapter of Best Buddies and internationally by Best Buddies and Special Olympics, is an international movement seeking to “host awareness events all over the world to promote acceptance for people with intellectual disabilities and an end to the hate speech they endure,” according to the official Facebook group.

“Our goal is to raise awareness about the r-word and how hurtful it is to all people with intellectual and developmental disabilities,” Best Buddies president and senior Lindsay Steig said. “It should be cut from everyone’s vocabulary.”

Steig said that using the word as a medical term is not an issue, but using it as an insult is. Instead, she said to replace the r-word with terms like “stupid.”

The UW-Eau Claire chapter of Best Buddies set up a table in the Davies Center Tuesday, March 2 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Wednesday, March 3 in Hilltop from 5-8pm. Members asked students to sign a petition in the form of a large banner and pledge to end their use of the r-word. The UW-Eau Claire campaign collected over 500 signatures.

According to the Special Olympics Web site, up to three percent of the world’s population has intellectual disabilities. At an estimated 200 million people, it is the world’s largest disability population.

Steig said that UW-Eau Claire’s chapter of Best Buddies would most likely sponsor the event again in the future. She said that the campus community should be a welcoming place for all people and the only way to make that happen was to hold awareness events like “Spread the Word to End the Word” campaign and to talk to people directly.

“I definitely enjoyed listening to people’s stories and hearing reasons why people have eliminated the word from their vocabulary,” she said.