Collegiate Times

Michele Shebroe became concerned witht he accessibility of campus after her father, who has a back injury, was unable to navigate to the hilly terrain.

Bingham said that while all ramps on the residential side of campus are regulation, they are still “a long stretch” for someone in a wheelchair. He mentioned that some universities use underground tunnels into buildings to avoid big hills into the regular entries, and that all students could utilize them during the winter.

 “Sometimes the amount of red tape ... just feels like a long time,” said Susan Angle, director of Services for Students with Disabilities. “There’s a process — meetings, architects, regulations.”

She said even small projects could take more than a semester.

Funding can also be a roadblock. The ADA office has a $100,000 project budget and additional funding comes from the university capital budget or from department budgets. However, one project can eat up a lot of a budget.

“A simple solution could be $20,000 to $30,000,” said Mike Coleman, associate vice president for facilities. “Unfortunately, these things are not cheap.”

Coleman said implementing the ramp in the Burruss tunnel had cost several hundred thousand dollars. Prior to that there was a lift, which Tucker said was “a fix we could afford at the time,” as a lift costs around $10,000. A ramp is more reliable and doesn’t require maintenance like a lift would.

Bingham said that while the university budget cuts have put certain projects on hold — such as entire renovations of buildings — smaller projects are generally able to find funding, although it might be split between offices and departments. He added that the university has been willing to help with access projects.

Tucker said some renovations and additions were products of other projects. Sometimes the university would decide to install a ramp instead of stairs when creating sidewalks, and this project would come out of a different budget.

“How can we make the biggest bang for the buck?” he said.

Tucker pointed out that a project could be evaluated by the cost versus how much access was created. For example, implementing an elevator in a five-floor building might be expensive, but it is creating access to five floors that didn’t have access before.

Not every building lends itself to the kinds of projects people have in mind. Coleman said in the example of the Burruss tunnel, the campus was lucky there was enough space to build a ramp.

Angle hopes that the recent formation of a new executive ADA committee is a step in the right direction. Karen Eley Sanders, interim vice president of diversity and inclusion, heads the committee, which consists of administrators, professional staff, faculty and students. Angle, Reilly and Bush all sit on the committee, which has met once so far.

The new committee “will have an awareness to move the process on a little quicker,” Angle said.

In addition, Bingham said the new committee will have spending power, something an older ADA executive committee didn’t have. The committee plans to revise its mission this summer and set more priorities.

Bush believes that the university and architecture in general is in a transition period of shifting to more natural disability access.

“That’s just the way designers think now — more about connectivity,” he said.

He said that as the baby boomer generation gets older, there would be a general emphasis on satisfying the needs of those with physical disabilities. 

He said he also hopes design evolves so nothing is considered a “separate” accommodation for someone with a disability.

For example, he believes the front entrance of a building won’t require stairs anymore, and other accessible features will become less obvious.

“The eye won’t see the ramp,” he said. “You’ll just say, ‘that’s how I get into the building.”

“We won’t sense that there’s a separate community for disabled,” Bush said. “That we’re not just jerry-rigging to accommodate them.” 

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A version of this article appeared in the May 5 issue of the Collegiate Times.