Photo courtesy of Lucie Englehardt ’23
During the recent College-wide protests, a concern brought up by students was the large amount of inaccessible buildings on campus.
While accessibility has always been an issue, many of the College’s students are not fully aware of the difficulties disabled students face daily.
According to the College’s website, only 12 of the College’s 56 buildings are “fully accessible.” This is 21.43%. Of the College’s 23 residence houses, only 6 houses—all located in the “Plex”–are fully accessible. “A lot of dorms are not accessible,” said Natalia Hall ‘25. “It really poses a challenge for a lot of students and I personally know four students who have transferred for accessibility reasons.”
These Plex dorms are located a fair distance away from academic buildings, making it even more difficult for disabled students to get to class. Additionally, many of these academic buildings are not fully accessible. The elevators and automatic door openers in Conn’s “fully accessible” buildings often do not work.
For example, Cummings Art Center is only accessible from the second floor, and the elevator is currently broken. This makes it nearly impossible for disabled students to major in Art or even attend an arts class.
These challenges regarding accessibility have not gone unnoticed by students of Architectural Studies 342: Architectural Design II – Selected Topics. In this class, students spend the semester focused on designing a sustainable, accessible building. This semester, the class is focused on designing a sustainable and accessible dorm building. “Currently in 342, we’re designing an apartment-style residential hall which can host about 150 people for campus,” said Emmy Castano ‘25. “Some specific needs we’re trying to aim for are sustainability and accessibility in our dorms and transitioning away from [what] we don’t have here at Conn.”
ARC 342 is taught by Professor Bill Pollack, who also teaches ARC 241, a course focused on designing a specific building for a visiting professor, in the fall. In both classes, Pollack stresses the importance of designing sustainable and accessible buildings. “I think it’s good architectural practice to address both [concepts],” said Pollack. “It’s a topic we address in all the projects across the two studios.”
For the project, students met with their client: Dean Rothenberger, the Dean of Residential Education and Living (REAL). “Before we started the project, Dean Rothenberger came over to our class because she knows way better [than us] about what the students need on campus,” said Kinley Yangden ‘24. “We focused our designs based on her feedback of wanting apartment-style housing and being accessible for students.”
Through the process of designing the dorm, students in ARC 342 have come to see glaring accessibility issues they didn’t notice before. “Honestly, I didn’t really think about accessibility needs in my first dorm as a first year,” said Castano. “It kind of changed the way I view an environment, I can now analyze a building and say this wouldn’t work for x, y, and z.”
An architectural coding activity in one class session also helped students see additional accessibility barriers. “We did an in-depth activity into coding and the fine details which go into a space in which a wheelchair can go through,” said Mira Binzen ‘25. “It really kind of opened my eyes to how difficult it must be for students in wheelchairs to move around our campus.” Through this activity, Binzen noticed that a wheelchair would not even be able to turn in her dorm room. “It’s one of those things where the philosophy of where you’re taught something for the first time you see it everywhere,” said Binzen.
“In another architecture class, we talked about how spaces are designed for the average human being and there are so many different types of people you can’t make dimensions based on a single size,” said Aurora Kreyche ‘25.
“Having the architecture eye you start to see accessibility issues,” said Will Stevenson ‘24. “For example, in this building [Burdick], there’s an accessibility bathroom in the basement where there are no elevators to get to the basement, so you see things that don’t work or that do work around campus.”
As a result of their studies, ARC 342 students reached a general consensus on the issue of accessibility. “I definitely think that accessibility is a really big issue on campus,” said Hall. “I think it’s one of the big factors which pushes students away from applying to Conn.” “In order for us to increase student diversity we need to address accessibility issues and make it a space where people can feel supported and get an education without having to go through so much trouble,” said Hall. Additionally, abled people can be temporarily disabled and affected by accessibility issues they usually wouldn’t be. “I know friends who had injuries and walking across campus was incredibly difficult for them,” said Hall. “Figuring out ways in which we can support students, not just those who need accessibility services but for the community as a whole.”
When asked what changes the school should make to make Conn more accessible, many students had similar views. With a limited budget, ARC 342 students suggested always leaving automatic door openers turned on, paving uneven sidewalks, placing utilities (such as washers and dryers) in more accessible locations, and installing ramps around campus. With a large or “unlimited” budget, students suggested the implementation of elevators in all academic and residential buildings, renovating dorms to accommodate accessibility needs, and improving infrastructure around campus.
While the consensus among students is clear regarding the need for accessibility, physical change is hard to come by. “Post COVID-19, it is actually a lot harder to make physical changes because of supply and labor issues,” said SGA Chief of Finance Maddie Vanech ‘23. “It would also take a lot of rearranging of Conn’s budget to do it but if someone really cared about it, it could be done.” This change would not be overnight but rather gradual. Vanech believes that “if a concerted effort was made to create those changes on campus it is possible.”
This physical change is even harder to achieve with staffing issues. “In 2017, Conn offered a retirement deal to a lot of employees and a lot of people took the deal,” said Vanech. “[Conn] did not replace a lot of these people when they left, so the College has been operating on a short staff for a while.” This had led to a large deferment maintenance list (an official list of issues to address) for the College’s recently hired Executive Director of Facilities Management and Campus Planning, Justin Wolfradt to address.
Though difficult, Vanech hopes that those above “listen to understand, rather than listen to respond.” By this, Vanech means there are hopefully less short-term fixes offered by administrators and more planned out action. This plan may involve three steps: listening to students who are speaking about their issues regarding accessibility, forming action plans to address these physical concerns with long-term solutions, and diverting or assigning specific funds to bring action into place.
To help support accessibility on campus, students should be “continuing to listen to the voices of disabled students and also just curating a community of care,” said Vanech. “It’s important to recognize on a human level that these are issues which impact real people in their daily lives and supporting these people on a human to human level is very important.”
In terms of specifically pushing the administration for change, Vanech suggests doing whatever feels safest and smartest for oneself. For example, while others may feel more comfortable protesting, some may feel more safe speaking one on one with a Dean or administrator.
Ultimately, Vanech hopes that the College can better apply its idea of Connections. “We talk so much about Connections and it draws all of us in and we all care so much about this idea of connecting people and ideas and then the College itself has plans which don’t fully connect,” said Vanech. “We have people here who specialize in all the different areas we need to make this campus amazing, we just need to listen and help those people communicate with each other.” Though the College may be connected academically through the Connections program, it is currently disconnected physically .
To change this, connections should be established among professors with expertise in disability and accessibility, skilled and invested administrators, and students with a variety of accessibility needs in order to create meaningful long-term solutions. Though the process may be draining, accessibility is an important issue and the physical campus must be restructured so all students can succeed.
