Three social work seniors put on an “Accessibility Awareness Community Forum,” which brought awareness to the lack of accessibility on campus that some students, alum and community members have faced at Northwestern. Students, staff and faculty and the Orange City community gathered into the Vogel Room on Thursday, Nov. 7 at 7 p.m.
“We were inspired to choose this as our community project because we all had been exposed to the inaccessibility on campus in a variety of ways,” they said. Grace Harre and Natalie Hoffman have formed friendships with some NEXT students that had limited mobility and/or physical disabilities. As a resident assistant last year on Stegenga’s third floor, Amber Millard had a resident move to the first floor after a sport injury because the elevator was not functioning regularly.
This forum was a project for their Community Systems: Theory/Practice class with Dr. Stokes. “We also had great conversations with John Menning, Sherry Lang and Melanie McDaniel that helped us understand how this issue is prominent on NW’s campus and potential areas for us to point out that would increase accessibility,” they said.
Harre, Millard and Hoffman invited a diverse group of people to talk about their experiences with the lack of accessibility, not only at NW, but in other spaces, followed by a panel discussion. The panel included NEXT student Melanie McDaniel, who occasionally needs a wheelchair; NW student Lincoln Siebert, who had a knee injury last year that had him in a wheelchair; NW alum Rob Roozeboom, who uses a wheelchair; and community members who work with people that need accessibility accommodations. “We tried to get multiple perspectives to show that this is not just an isolated issue, but an issue that negatively affects multiple people who live, work, or visit campus,” they said.
Some issues addressed include the lack of automatic door opening buttons on campus. For example, Van Peursem Hall (VPH) has one automatic door button, and most of the time, that button does not work. The VPH button is on the east side of the building, across the street from the theatre building. However, the VPH handicap parking spot is on the west side of the building, near Zwemer. The ramp and elevator are on the north side of the VPH, across the green from the music hall. This causes the people needing accommodations to zigzag around and inside the building. In addition, when the automatic door opening button does not work, this can cause some people to be late to class if there are no people nearby to let them into VPH.
Another example is Christy Suites, which only has the automatic button on one side of the building, the east side, which faces the Welcome Center. These doors do not have a sidewalk leading to them, but instead an open parking lot, which can be dangerous for wheelchair users because of potential moving vehicles. However, the west side of Christy, the side facing North Suites, where most of the student traffic is, has a sidewalk connecting the suites to the rest of campus. But there is no automatic door button.
The cafeteria is another place on campus that is tricky to navigate for some. For example, if a student is in a wheelchair, it is tricky for them to see the food options and/or reach over to the deep pans to choose their food.
Another issue mentioned was the lack of proper bathroom space. In some NW bathrooms, like the Rowenhorst Student Center (RSC) or DeWitt Learning Commons (LC) bathrooms, there are no handicap stalls, or the designated handicap stall might be too small to fit a wheelchair.
Harre, Millard and Hoffman ended the forum with suggestions to create more accessible spaces on NW, such as more automatic door opening buttons, automatic door opening buttons that work and adequate space for handicap stalls. “We learned a lot, but we learned that hearing people’s stories and experiences is very impactful and necessary in creating any macro, or communal, change,” they said. “We also learned the value of doing life with others and sharing our platform or influence to bring attention to the injustices that occur in any given space, population or setting.”
