KATERINA KOUTSANDREAS
Special to The Leader
Editor’s Note: This article was originally written independently from The Leader as Katerina’s final project for an investigative journalism course last semester. While it has been trimmed for space, the entire article is available almost entirely as Katerina wrote it. It’s a sobering look at an important issue on campus; in the words of the author, “what affects few can affect all.”
Have you ever slipped on a poorly salted sidewalk? Have you ever had trouble opening a door or had one swing back at you when you weren’t expecting it? Have you ever had trouble accessing any of the buildings on Fredonia’s campus? Now, imagine facing these seemingly small day-to-day challenges with a physical disability. According to the University’s website, Fredonia has over 5,000 students. I was able to zoom in and talk with a handful of them. Victoria Hendrix, Brandon Gunther and Burgandi Rakoska were all students who attended Fredonia and have life-long physical disabilities. They let me in on some of the hardships that they face at Fredonia: broken automatic door buttons, lack of snow and ice removal in the winter months, difficult living accommodations and barely accessible academic buildings.
But do these issues only prove problematic for students who are permanently disabled? My interview with Emily Wilkinson, a student who was temporarily disabled for six months, tell me otherwise. She says from experience that whether it’s for a few days, a few weeks or a lifetime, everyone has the potential to be affected by a physical disability, and this campus has a long way to go in terms of accessibility.
The rights of students with disabilities are protected by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. These legal documents forbid discrimination against individuals with disabilities by institutions that receive federal funding, as well as other places of employment, governments, telecommunications and public transportation.
Colleges and universities are responsible for making sure that courses, programs, services, activities and facilities match up with the appropriate accommodations for students with disabilities. It is required by the law. This makes you wonder: is Fredonia in any direct violation of these laws?
Adam Hino, Fredonia’s Disability Support Services Coordinator, told me that Fredonia works very closely with students with disabilities. If students have issues in terms of accessibility, they report to Hino. From there, he corresponds with facilities and administration to ensure any difficulties are quickly addressed.
“We do our very best to attend to all of the individual needs of students with disabilities,” said Hino.
He went on to explain that in terms of accessibility, Fredonia is up to code and is not in direct violation of any laws. Because they are attended to regularly, the issues of snow removal and broken automatic door buttons are not grounds for Fredonia to be penalized under the law. However, many of the issues with campus services and accessibility prove to be serious inconveniences for students with disabilities.
CAMPUS ADVOCATES
Accessibility issues for students with disabilities are not new to Fredonia. During Fall 2015, Fredonia’s Student Association and the Students with Disabilities Union hosted an event called Stand Up By Sitting Down. A number of the members from the Student Association got wheelchairs donated, sat down in them and went about their daily schedules. Their purpose? To raise awareness in the campus community about the challenges faced by students with physical disabilities.
Former Chief Justice of the Student Association Courtney Hout discussed how she was made aware of the lack of accessibility on Fredonia’s campus. During Fredonia’s annual Pink the Rink hockey game, Hout entered the women’s bathroom in Steele Hall. She was shocked to see that her classmate, Victoria Hendrix, was unable to fit her electric wheelchair into the handicap stall. After that, with the help of Hendrix and Burgandi Rakoska, Stand Up by Sitting Down was planned and executed.
Courtney Hout, Kyle Stolt and Tracy Halloran spoke about the obstacles they faced while spending eight hours in wheelchairs. The handicap bathroom stalls were barely accessible, the sidewalks were uneven and sloped, many automatic door buttons did not work, counters at dining halls were too high to reach, and wheelchair ramps were too steep and dangerous.
Hout said that she and other members who participated “wheeled on the grass to simulate what it is like using a wheelchair on snow in the winter.” In an article from The Leader, another member, Kyle Stolt, recalled, “I got stuck at least once … if that’s pretty similar to snow, then it’s definitely a challenge.”
Although they struggled throughout the day, they also experienced a good amount of kindness. They told us that many students on campus opened doors for them and offered help when they appeared to be struggling.
Burgandi Rakoska, then-president of the Students with Disabilities Union, expressed similar sentiments in her Facebook post from early Spring 2016. Rakoska is in a wheelchair and is unable to use the stairs, but the elevator in Fenton Hall was broken. She was discouraged about the possibility of not being able to make it to her class that was located on the second floor.
She was about to turn around and head back to her dorm when a maintenance worker stopped her. He put in the extra effort to “hot wire” the elevator for her. He got her to class and waited for her class to be over to bring her back down.
Although the broken elevator was obviously a huge problem, Rakoska closed her post on a more optimistic note. “I still think that this is the best example that I can use to describe the accessibility here at SUNY Fredonia. Because there are definitely parts of this campus that are inaccessible or could use repairs. But for every inaccessible encounter, there is always someone (usually a whole group of people) who are there to advocate and/or help in any way that they can,” Rakoska said.
We tested the elevator in Fenton, and it is now repaired and fully functional. Rakoska and the members of the Student Association also said that all reportedly broken buttons were repaired directly after their advocacy event.
SNOW & ICE REMOVAL
My interviews revealed that winter is a challenging season for students with physical disabilities at Fredonia. Their stories show that poor snow removal and unsalted sidewalks have made the campus dangerous and difficult to navigate.
Victoria Hendrix, a then-junior communications disorders major at Fredonia, has cerebral palsy and has been in a wheelchair since she was 5-years-old. At the time of the interview, she was living in University Commons.
Victoria says that on a snowy day, she leaves for class forty minutes early. She still usually ends up being late.
“I and other students who have wheelchairs live on this side of campus. So, this side is usually pretty clear, but the side that all of my classes are on is where all the snow is,” Hendrix said.
Last semester, Hendrix was just arriving at Thompson Hall to go to her first class of the day. There was a lot of snow, but she made it to the building on time. Just as she was about to enter the building, her wheelchair got stuck in the snow piled up outside the door that hadn’t been shoveled or plowed away. She sighed, “All I could think was, ‘I’m late to class, and I’m sitting right outside the door.”
This was not Hendrix’s only horror story about the challenges of being physically disabled in Fredonia during the winter months. She tells us that a few weeks after the first incident, she had a group meeting in Hendrix Hall. When she was approaching a ramp to get into the building, the sidewalks were covered in snow. This made it hard for her to notice that there was a curb in front of her. When she accidentally went over it, her wheelchair tipped over with her in it.
“This thing weighs 300 pounds,” she says, “so this was not an easy fall.”
Luckily, two girls who were walking out of the building saw and helped her up. The fall resulted in an injured arm, sopping wet clothes, and embarrassment.
Had enough? Here’s another one. Brandon Gunther, a then-senior double major in sports management and business finance, has a visual impairment that has left him blind for most of his life. Gunther said that one of his biggest problems with Fredonia’s campus is that the ice on the sidewalks is never salted.
When the winter weather came along, Gunther had fallen several times because he could not see the the black ice on the campus sidewalks. Last semester, he was walking to his class in Thompson Hall, and he fell pretty hard. He was in a lot of pain after his class, so his went to LoGrasso Hall, Fredonia’s medical building. Brandon said, “Slipping and sliding on the ice that day gave me a sprained ankle, and I was in a lot of pain for a while.”
On Feb. 18, Rakoska posted a video on Facebook. The video shows her at the top of the wheelchair ramp outside of Fenton Hall. The ramp is coated in snow and ice. Almost no concrete is visible. She pushed down the ramp, and the ice caused her to lose control of her wheelchair. She violently crashed into the bar at the bottom, and her body jerked forward and hits it.
President Virginia Horvath, is tagged in the caption of the video: “Now this might just be the concussion talking but a thick layer of snow/ice on a ramp does NOT seem safe. Not even remotely. President Ginny Horvath, is there any way to prevent this from happening in the future?”
Rakoska proved her point. Horvath commented back with concern, stating that she would contact facilities staff, have them take care of it and figure out why it was not cleared in the first place.
I went directly to Kevin Cloos, director of facilities, to get to the root of these issues. He told me that Facilities is continually in contact with the Office of Disabilities Services. At the start of each semester, Disabilities Services shares student schedules with Facilities Services. The staff then try their best to make the areas in the students’ schedules their priority before the time of their classes.
Cloos stressed that there are five miles of roads and eight miles of sidewalks on Fredonia’s campus. He brought up the issue that Facilities Services is currently understaffed. Recent sicknesses, vacations and retirements have left the custodial staff down several positions. These are the people who, in addition to the cleaning of buildings, are responsible for salting and shoveling ramps and sidewalks.
He went on to tell me that it is the job of the grounds crews to plow all snow in the parking lots, shovel stairs and clear fire hydrants. Guess how many workers Fredonia’s grounds crew is composed of? 10. 10 workers total.
These details that Cloos provided me with seem to be unknown by Fredonia students. Gunther said that the Students with Disabilities Union often discusses the way money is allocated on campus. The members of the union feel that their tuition money is too often spent on projects that do not apply to students with disabilities.
Gunther brought up the issue that the school recently spent money on a new, high-tech scoreboard.
“A scoreboard is just something the students on this campus don’t need,” Gunther said, “especially us students who have physical disabilities. The money would [have been] better spent toward improvements in maintenance or facilities services.”
Cloos said that all of the Facilities staff seek to provide the best services possible. However, their lack of numbers proves to be a difficult burden.
BROKEN BUTTONS
Another issue persists on Fredonia’s campus for students with disabilities. A number of automatic door buttons around campus are frequently broken. Last semester, I went around campus to test out all of the automatic door buttons.
The following list of automatic door buttons were not functional: two in University Commons, two in McEwen, three in King Concert Hall and one in Steele Hall. This list may seem small, but even if only one student experiences difficulties due to a broken broken button it matters, said Emily Wilkinson, a student who was temporarily disabled in Spring 2015 became temporarily disabled due to a sports injury that resulted in a fractured femur and torn ACL, MCL and PCL. Those are the ligaments that hold the knee together. Wilkinson had two knee surgeries directly after her injury. When she returned to Fredonia to finish sophomore year, she was on crutches and in a leg immobilizer.
Wilkinson said that, during the Spring 2015 semester, all of her classes were held in Houghton. There are two doors to pass through when entering Houghton. Wilkinson says that the automatic door button worked on the first door but not on the second. Too often, she would get stuck in between the two doorways until someone helped her open the second door. She said that she remembers the experience so vividly because she felt so discouraged.
Hendrix experienced similar issues at University Commons. Hendrix likes to take the front entrance when she gets back from class so that she can grab a hot chocolate from Starbucks or hang out with friends in the lobby. But there’s an issue that delays her leisure time.
“I like going in the front entrance, but it’s a pain sometimes because the buttons to get into the first doors don’t work. The buttons to get into the second door work, but not the first ones. Thankfully, usually someone is around to help me out,” she said.
Thankfully.
This semester, it is not only two buttons that do not work at the entrance of University Commons. Now, all four buttons required for students with disability to enter and leave the front of University Commons are not functional.
DORMS
Hendrix lives in University Commons, which is where the medical suites for students with disabilities are located. In an interview last semester, she invited me into her room to show me how the medical suites are structured. The room has several accommodations: an automatic door, lowered hooks, lowered closet racks and shelves, and grab bars next to the toilet and in the shower.
Upon entering the dorm, I noticed that necessary accommodations were missing. Although the door to enter the room is automatic, the bathroom door is not. Hendrix showed me the difficulty she experiences when entering and exiting her bathroom. I watched as she tried to push the door open from inside the bathroom. It continually swung shut and pushed her wheelchair back. Eventually, I could not stand back and watch anymore and went to open the door for her.
On top of that, there is no grab bar for her to use to help her get in and out of her bed. She tells us that she struggles most nights getting into bed.
“Usually I have to flop out of my chair and onto the bed, belly first. Then, I use my arms to pull myself up,” Hendrix said.
She said that for the first two years that she lived in University Commons, she requested to get her closet doors removed. She feels that the doors made it difficult to get into the closet. They always hit her legs or her wheelchair when she tried to open them. She complained about the closet doors for two years. The residence hall personnel removed her closet doors last Fall.
Hendrix added that more students who have wheelchairs moved into the building and began complaining about their closet doors. Administration finally realized the scratches and dents in the doors from the wheelchairs and decided to fix the problem. Although Hendrix a expresses her happiness that the closet doors are gone, she’s troubled as to why it took so long to get the job done when she was so persistent in voicing the issue.
Hendrix is not the only student who has struggled with living accommodations. During the Spring 2015 semester, Wilkinson lived on campus on the second floor of Disney Hall. The first obstacle, said Wilkinson, was that Disney Hall does not have an elevator. But it is connected to a dorm that does have an elevator, Eisenhower Hall.
Here’s the problem: in order to get into Eisenhower to use the elevator, a door needs to be unlocked by a residence hall employee. Wilkinson said that, after a lot of hesitation and multiple phone calls from her parents, the resident director agreed to unlock it for her whenever she needed it.
According to her, this was not the case. She said that on more than one occasion she was late to class because when she would try to contact an RA, “ring, ring! No answer.”
What could she do? “I had to resort to sitting on my ass and scooting down two flights of stairs. One time my roommate actually had to carry me down them,” she continued, “it was embarrassing, dangerous and pretty painful.” After a few of these experiences, she complained to Residence Life on campus and was moved to a single medical suite in University Commons.
When she moved into University Commons, Wilkinson had traded in her crutches for a wheelchair. Other than having the convenience of an accessible elevator, she told us that living in University Commons wasn’t much easier than living on the second floor of Disney Hall. She says that living in a single-occupant room took away the constant help and support she was getting when living in a dorm with her friends.
There was no one around to help her with small challenges like entering her room. “The wheelchair was huge, and my leg stuck straight out in the immobilizer. Getting into my room was impossible. I pretty much had to get out of the wheelchair to even open the door. Once I got into the room, the door was so extremely heavy. It hit me every time,” Wilkinson explained.
She repeated that there was no one around to help her. She told us that the medical suite did not provide any kind of bar to help her get from her wheelchair into her bed, there was no bar to grab onto in the shower, and once she was able to get into it, there was no shower seat provided. She had to bring her own.
Infuriated, Wilkinson posed a question: “Without these simple accommodations, how can these suites possibly be classified as ‘medical suites’?” she said. Based on the differences between Wilkinson’s room and Hendrix’s, Wilkinson didn’t seem to be given a medical suite at all, even though Fredonia’s Residence Life had her under the impression that she was.
ACADEMIC BUILDINGS
As a person who is blind, Gunther experiences additional frustrations with certain academic buildings on campus. The buildings that he finds particularly inaccessible are Rockefeller Arts Center, Thompson Hall and McEwen Hall.
The one statement Gunther said is important to mention is that “Rockefeller Arts Center is a mess! Not just for folks with disabilities, but for everybody. I wish the school would redo that building entirely.”
Gunther said that the design and multiple levels of the building makes it extremely hard for him to find his way around. He dreads it and tries his best to avoid the building altogether. However, he won’t be able to avoid it this semester because one of his classes is located there. He said that he is going to have to devote some serious time getting better acquainted with the building.
Gunther has a lot of classes in Thompson Hall. Although it is much more accessible than Rockefeller, he said, it is still not very good. The way the wings of the building span out into east and west is tricky. Throw in the interconnecting hallways, and he feels like it’s a maze.
McEwen Hall is the least problematic of the three for Brandon. His issue with the building is that it is difficult to find the staircase that leads to the third floor. “The third floor needs to be more accessible,” he says. “I have to try to figure out my way to that hidden hallway after the first set of stairs to find the ones I need.”
Horvath commented one of Burgandi’s Facebook posts that acknowledges that some parts of campus lack accessibility with the following statement: “The campus has a long way to go with these old buildings. Thank you for your patience, humor, and reminders that we need to get this right.”
Therein lies the root of the problem. How many reminders will it take? How many students with permanent and temporary physical disabilities will have to wait? How long will it take for Fredonia to get this right? When will active pacification be replaced with authentic action?