By Sean O’Brien
Assistant Opinion Editor
“We have a beautiful campus; now let’s make sure everyone has the ability to experience that,” said Jessica Ceglia, a junior psychology major, about an issue the university needs to pay more attention to solving: accessibility for those with a physical handicap, whether they’re confined to a wheelchair or just stuck on crutches for a while.
Everything I heard about campus accessibility while snooping around for this article made me more and more glad I am not required to use it.
Ceglia, who normally experiences no impediments to her mobility, found navigating campus during her time on crutches to be a much more arduous experience than it ever should have been.
Let’s say I broke my leg. Now, with my broken leg, I have to get to a class on the third floor of Plassmann Hall from the Hickey Dining Hall. I have to go out the doors on the Devereux side (the ones on the Shay/Loughlen side have stairs, remember) and go around the whole building. Then, once I’ve hopped over to Plassmann, I’m welcomed with more stairs. So around to the parking lot entrance I go, where I get into the elevator they have there. After that, it’s up to the third floor, right?
Wrong. That elevator takes me up one floor, where I can hop my way through the crowd of students waiting for coffee at Heavenly Grounds to get to the second elevator of my journey. That elevator will take me up to the packed halls of third Plassmann, where I can finally fight my way to my classroom.
None of this would sound at all appealing to a prospective student who would be in that position every day for four years.
The people in charge of campus facilities are only too aware of the shortcomings present on campus. Philip Winger, Associate Vice President for Facilities, explained how Bonaventure manages accessibility.
According to Winger, with exception to the most recently built buildings, there is a national standard that dictates how buildings must be constructed to meet certain guidelines. In the case of other, older buildings that don’t meet code, a reasonable accommodation must be offered.
“And that’s not what we want, that’s not the ideal, that’s not the purpose of the law and that’s not what we would like as an institution,” Winger said. “We want to be entirely inclusive and the new buildings are built that way, but we are working our way in that direction.”
However, economics often get in the way, as renovations are expensive.
While there is a portion of the facilities budget set aside for getting the university up to standard, Winger said it is eaten away in the maintenance of more widely used campus amenities.
Why isn’t our ailing university pouring more money into improving our campus accessibility and, consequentially, inclusiveness? Enrollment is down, according toEmily Sinsabaugh, Vice President for University Relations, but we’re alienating an entire population of potential students through our obsolescence.
With a motto like “Becoming Extraordinary,” we shouldn’t be trying to catch up to standards; we should be setting new ones.
Students with a permanent or temporary disability they need addressed should contact Disability Support Service Coordinator Adriane Spencer at aspencer@sbu.edu.
obriensp11@bonaventure.edu
