<p>I am presenting a speech soon; it is to be a persuasive policy speech and I have decided to research on how difficult it is for physically disabled students to get around campuses like mine. More specifically, I am researching what policies need improvement to better accommodate physically disabled students.</p>
<p>I am currently at Pepperdine University and you'll hear most students say it's hard enough to get around this campus with two fully functioning legs as it is. I can't imagine what it'd be like to try and get around while confined to a wheelchair, or even on crutches after an injury. </p>
<p>If anyone is at a similar campus to mine (especially in CA please) where many buildings are situated on hills and it requires many flights of stairs to get around, would you please share your school name and whether or not you feel that enough is being done to help the physically disabled students on your campus, if you see any around at all? Which brings me to another issue that I am taking into consideration, just a side thought you don't have to answer- what if campuses like ours do not see many physically disabled students because they do not feel welcome and do not apply in the first place for the very reason that it would be virtually impossible for them to get around? </p>
<p>Your feedback and help is very much appreciated!</p>
<p>maybe a 5 degree incline for our city campus. however not sure about the harborside campus which is the culinary arts area. but its pretty much handicap accessible with ramps and all and elevators. Furthest you walk from the main dorms to the academic buildings is 3 city blocks which isn’t even much.</p>
<p>My school, like most of the state of Michigan, is relatively flat. However it is a very big campus and I don’t know how anybody without a motorized wheelchair would manage, and I would worry about getting through traffic since we are an open campus in the heart of Downtown Ann Arbor. </p>
<p>If I were you I’d think about calling up some disabilities offices at various schools in your area of interest and ask them what they think. I am not in a wheelchair so I don’t really think about the presence of ramps and whatnot, though as a severe exercise induced asthmatic I do pay attention to elevators. You’d get more accurate results from people who are actually “tuned in,” so to speak. to these issues.</p>
<p>I live on the far side of campus from my 7:30am class so, before daylight savings time, it was dark out and it’s Seattle so of course it rains all the time. Well, when I was in a hurry, I’d go ankle deep in puddles every once in awhile and it really ****ed me off.</p>
<p>Anyways, Seattle is pretty hilly so that’s an issue. But the University does try. There’s usually a way to get into pretty much every building with a wheelchair. There are some quite elaborate ramps set up when you have a rather big hill outside.</p>
<p>At my college most of the pedestrian paths are interrupted by some random stairs. I guess someone thought that a long flat path with four steps in the middle looks better than a slightly sloped path without stairs. </p>
<p>Needless to say, many of the wheelchair accessible routes involve some major detours.</p>
<p>I go to UC Santa Cruz, which is on a nice big hill and very spread out.</p>
<p>Our school has wheel chair ramps and buses that are wheelchair-friendly, but I’ve never really seen a handicapped student. I think the nature of the campus is definitely a factor. Even with ramps and buses, the school is still a hill and those can only do so much.</p>
<p>I think it’s unfortunate that some handicapped students feel like that they won’t be able to make do at a campus, but there’s only so much that can be done.</p>
<p>I go to USC. If you’re been here before, you know that they love the flatness. They have this small hump in the main quad that everyone calls “the hill” because there are no other hills on campus. And it never takes more than 15 mins to walk from one end of campus to the other. So I’d say our campus is really walkable.</p>
<p>I go to UArizona, and it’s extremely walkable. Only issue are bikers swerving into us! Everything is wheelchair accessible – except for the dorms. Only a handful of ours have elevators, and for some reason, Res Life tried putting every kid in a wheelchair on the 2nd and 3rd floors of every dorm… can only imagine that nightmare for them!</p>
<p>I go to the University of Maryland, and while we are a hill/step heavy campus, there are a number of paths with ramps and low-grade hills that are wheelchair accessible. We even have an online navigation system where you can select routes that specifically have ramped curbs and low incline hills (developed by a student research team) </p>
<p>Thank you everyone so much for your feedback! I do realize that there is only so much that can be done. In fact I think most of the schools that I’ve researched are just about doing everything they humanly can to accommodate students with disabilities. While I’m not presenting this speech to criticize or put down my school’s efforts, surely there must be at least one thing that we can change or add to make our school more welcome. </p>
<p>Perhaps I’ll try to shift my focus to changing the name of the office that serves students with disabilities. I’ve realized that the majority of schools are likely to use some name along the lines of Disabled Students Office or Disability Services Office. Does anyone else think that could potentially be problematic? I was reading some article along the way of my research last night and it was saying how it’d be less offensive to use this “people first” idea when referring to someone; i.e a person with disabilities instead of a disabled person. Not that this changes much to eliminate the word “disabled”; I don’t know if there is really any way around it.</p>
<p>Ohio State isn’t great for wheelchair users I’d say. I walk upwards of 2 miles to some classes, and I can’t imagine doing that in a wheelchair. Further, many buildings only have service elevators, that require a decent amount of upper body leverage to open a gate. Also, most dorms have elevators, but require stairs to get to them…walk down a flight of stairs from the outdoors to get to the lobby, then around the corner to elevators is /boggle.</p>
<p>“Does anyone else think that could potentially be problematic? I was reading some article along the way of my research last night and it was saying how it’d be less offensive to use this “people first” idea when referring to someone; i.e a person with disabilities instead of a disabled person. Not that this changes much to eliminate the word “disabled”; I don’t know if there is really any way around it.”</p>
<p>As someone with physical and learning disabilities, I think that’s laughable. I have never met anyone with a disability who was offended by the word “disability,” besides newly diagnosed who are coming to terms with their condition or people who don’t really know what it means. All that would do is twist and confuse people, and frankly, so many people disregard disabilities (especially learning, which is a LOT of what student disabilities offices handle) that I really DO NOT WANT us to move away from the word “disability.” People need to realize that being diagnosed with a disability really truly does mean that they are different, at least in that way. That doesn’t mean that their disability defines them but it DOES affect them.</p>
<p>And frankly I think when we get overly PC about things we take legitimacy from the issue. If you go out of your way to call it something silly to avoid offending people who aren’t offended anyway, people are going to notice that it is silly and laugh at it instead of taking it seriously like they ought to be doing.</p>
<p>My college has two campuses–one in a metro area and one in a rural area; I take shuttles between campuses, because I prefer living in the city, even though all my classes are on the rural campus. I recently broke my foot, and I can tell you, it’s been HORRIBLE to get around at my school. The rural campus has almost no handicap accessibility–the academic building has stairs, and that’s it. No elevator or anything. Going up and down those on crutches isn’t fun. All of the dorms are entirely not handicap accessible–all have at least front steps, no handicap entryway, and the on-campus apartments (which i live in) are all stairs. The academic building on the metro campus does have an elevator, thankfully, but our campus is so spread out through the area that you have to walk several blocks just to get there–not an easy feat on crutches. I’d probably cry if I was confined to a wheelchair here.</p>
<p>My daughter has problematic knees due to sports injuries - she has been excused from PE all 4 years of high school but thankfully she does not need crutches or a wheelchair. She can walk just fine for short periods as long as she can rest in between (so walking to classes is fine, but PE for an hour a day is out).</p>
<p>Pepperdine is on her list to apply to and we are very concerned about the hills. We are planning a visit there in December and will be finding out what (if any) accomodations can be made for her before she applies in Dec.</p>
<p>She wants to go to a very small school and has crossed off schools that were too spread out. For example, she crossed off Chapman University in Orange because the dorms were off campus. I think that many disabled students would consider access and layout of a school before applying…</p>
<p>I got to the University of Central Florida, which is kind of an interesting case. Because it’s in Florida, the land is completely flat, so there aren’t any problems there. The campus was modeled after Walt Disney’s original plans for EPCOT (the city EPCOT, not the theme park), so there aren’t any roads that cut through the middle of campus. Instead, a single, circular road goes around the perimeter of campus and the parking lots and parking garages line it. Most university buildings important to students are inside the circle, with the Student Union at the center. All of the classrooms, department offices, student services etc. are inside the road-circle. Dorms are on the very edge of the circle where they are accessible to parking and away from the heavy foot-traffic during the day. Inside the road-circle are three circular sidewalks. (So you can imagine a outer ring (the road), and three inner sidewalk rings.) Outside the road-circle are the campus police, research buildings, the football stadium, and other things students don’t generally visit often, if at all.</p>
<p>Because it’s a circle, it takes about 15 minutes to cover the diameter, but almost you don’t need to travel that far often.</p>
<p>I’m at Pepperdine as well, and I agree that it would be a very difficult campus for someone with disabilities to easily get around. I’ve seen the occasional person with crutches after an injury, but I can’t remember every seeing someone in a wheelchair on campus (I’m a senior, by the way).</p>
<p>I do know that sometimes you can call public safety and get a ride from them if you need one. For example, my roommate at the start of the semester was having some back problems, so they’d pick her up at Towers and drive her to main campus. Another girl I know had some problems with her knees freshman year, so they gave her access to park in the main lot (by Smothers).</p>
what school are you attending?</p>