For Christopher Baswell, a Barnard and Columbia professor who has been at this campus for 25 years, getting around has never been easy.
Baswell, who is paraplegic and uses a wheelchair, must take three elevators to access Schermerhorn Hall and call security to enter the Heyman Center for the Humanities, located in East Campus.
Until about three years ago, he could enter Philosophy Hall only during office hours. In order to access many buildings, Baswell needs to use a combination of tunnels and elevators—and security guards are often unaware of how to help him use these routes.
Baswell’s difficulties reflect a larger problem of how Columbia’s environment, both inside and outside the classroom, can feel less than welcoming for disabled students, staff and faculty.
BREAKING BARRIERS
Rachel Adams, an English professor who leads a Columbia project called “The Future of Disability Studies,” said she encountered difficulties even in the process of arranging the project’s first event—a panel discussion on Oct. 6 of the University’s treatment of disabled students, staff and faculty.
According to Adams, finding a room with easy access to disability-friendly bathrooms and microphones to accommodate the hard of hearing was a challenge in itself.
“My thinking about it was that it would be an intellectual project,” Adams said. However, she said, before they even started examining disability studies as an intellectual field, “there were actual problems with people getting into the room.”
“There are places where Columbia falls short of being a truly welcoming and inclusive environment,” Adams said. “Even if the resources are there, most faculty and staff are not well educated in the measures that need to be taken to create truly accessible environments, and that is where I think there is a shortcoming.”
Baswell, who spoke at the panel, agreed that disabilities accommodations at Columbia are lacking. While he said he’s seen improvements over the last quarter-century, much of campus is still hard to navigate—and Columbia’s disability services lag behind those of schools such as Harvard, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, all of which he has visited.
“Very often, people with motor disabilities … have to take a very, generously put, a very alternate route,” Baswell said—one which often involves “not dignified ways,” such as through basements and elevators.
“It’s unusual for any major university, such as Columbia, to have such a major piece of its intellectual fabric, such as the Heyman Center, that inaccessible,” Baswell said. He added, “in terms of disability access, we really are lagging behind.”
Both Baswell and Adams acknowledged that Columbia’s two-level geography makes it physically harder to improve accessibility.
Ryan Mandelbaum, CC ’13 and class of 2013 president, also raised this concern at a Columbia College Student Council town hall meeting on Sunday. Pupin Hall, Mandelbaum pointed out, does not have elevator access in some sections, and many of the buildings—which, since they were built before the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990, do not fully comply with regulations—are difficult to get around on a wheelchair or crutches due to the number of stairs and inclines.
Mandelbaum told Spectator that the number of staircases on campus makes navigating with a disability appear “extremely inconvenient.” He said he thought prospective students with disabilities, given a choice between Columbia and other comparable institutions, would probably choose to go elsewhere.
CHANGING ATTITUDES
Questions about disabilities are not limited to campus accessibility. According to Susan Quinby, director of Barnard’s Office of Disability Services, 90 percent of the students who register at the Office have an “invisible” or “non-apparent disability” such as ADHD, frequent migraines, or a learning disability.
Suzanne Walker, BC ’12 and a speaker at the October panel, said that people’s attitudes about disabilities needed to change both inside and outside the classroom. Although Walker, who sometimes wears a hearing aid, said that her own experience had been “very good,” she said that the general campus attitude toward disability “varies greatly.”
“I have a lot of friends who are registered with ODS at Barnard and, again, there are instances of professors being really accommodating and really helpful, and then there are also instances of professors really not,” Walker said.
According to Walker, dealing with disabilities on campus requires both attention to accessibility issues—such as having microphones at campus events or complying with ADA standards—and eliminating stigmas, especially toward “invisible” disabilities.
And while students are generally accommodating, she said, she feels the administration by and large does not go above or beyond basic standards.
“There’s always a difference between complying with standards, which is bare minimum, and actually making it so that the University is a place where people with disabilities can feel like they have access to everything,” Walker said.
BETTER INFORMATION
Although interviewees said they are satisfied with the services ODS provides, Baswell, Adams and Walker expressed concern that the information was not easily available—and the lack of centralization could be the reason students do not always have positive experiences.
“One thing we do lack is a centralized place for disseminating information about events that might be of interest to people in the Columbia community who care about disabilities,” Adams said.
ODS—which spans three different offices at Barnard, Columbia and Teachers College—has responsibilities that include extending the length of exams or providing a quieter setting for them, and finding scribes and note-takers for students.
According to Quinby, Barnard’s office sends out brochures to every student and practices an “early self-identification policy” in which it’s the student’s responsibility to notify professors. That way, the student is able to define the disability in his or her own terms and choose whether or not to speak with his or her instructors.
“It’s a team approach,” Quinby said. “The idea is to help students to be their own self-advocates and also to realize that having a safety net ... can help them as they’re proceeding through the semester.”
Baswell agreed that ODS’ services are generally helpful. However, both Baswell and Adams said they were concerned that, while the office’s programs are substantial, other University staff members do not always know how to serve people with disabilities.
Baswell said that security guards, for example, often aren’t aware of how to operate disability-access routes inside buildings—which “can be very, very frustrating for visitors.”
“We’re still challenged in getting centralized campus information,” Baswell said. “Things tend to be done piecemeal, school by school.”
Adams said that professors are not informed about what life is like as a disabled person at the University.
“People have goodwill, but they’re ignorant,” she said. “Even if someone wanted to improve the environment, they just don’t know how, or they may not be aware of how they may be excluding their students or making them feel uncomfortable.”
Ultimately, changing the campus attitude with regards to disabilities would be an extended process—one which would have to tackle day-to-day issues of accessibility, such as the ones Baswell faces, as well as making the issue of disability services a more central issue for the campus overall.
“I think that you can’t put in structural change unless you have widespread support, and you can’t have widespread support unless people’s attitudes have changed,” Walker said.
“Once you get more people to say, ‘Oh, everybody, no matter what their ability, should be able to have access to everything that people without disabilities have on campus,’ then there will be more motivation for the structural changes that needs to happen,” she added.
According to Adams, it needs to start with a genuine effort to make sure disabled people have full access to the campus’s resources.
“Even one step before you get to discussion of any substance is, can you get people into the room?”
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