Cedar Rapids Gazette: University of Northern Iowa administrators have decided to no longer host an annual conference featuring the controversial technique “facilitated communication.” “The academic leadership at UNI has met to discuss our practices with conferences and have agreed that we would no longer be hosting the facilitated communication conference,” Provost Jim Wohlpart wrote Oct. 24 to a group opposed to the practice. “Facilitated communication” entails facilitators conveying the thoughts of nonverbal individuals by supporting their hands over a keyboard or other device while words are typed.