Don’t Overlook Accessibility

For the vast majority of Harvard students, wheelchair accessibility on campus is something we do not have to personally worry about. But for those who rely on a wheelchair to get around, it makes all the difference. An op-ed published last week in this newspaper by Chanel E. Washington ’15 highlighted her personal struggles with accessibility and the feelings of exclusion that come from the lack of accessibility to many of the buildings on and around campus. Washington cites a lack of full wheelchair accessibility at Senior Bar venues chosen by the Senior Class Committee as symbolic of the issues that have plagued and detracted from her experience at Harvard. While an event held at the Cambridge Queen’s Head below Annenberg was fully accessible, events held at Tasty Burger and Uno’s suffered from a broken elevator and a lack of an elevator respectively.

On campus, the story is similar. Only three of the twelve upperclassmen Houses—Quincy, Pforzheimer, and Currier—are fully accessible for students in wheelchairs. While it is regrettable that not all of Harvard’s spaces are fully accessible, we understand that this problem is difficult to fix as quickly as we would like. It would not be reasonable to ask the University to quickly make large-scale infrastructure changes. However, despite the financial and logistical obstacles related to renovating the University’s historic buildings, all of the houses must eventually be made fully accessible to students in wheelchairs.

A 2009 report issued by the College specifically addressed the issue of accessibility in the context of Harvard’s House renewal project. Administrators require that only five percent of the suites in each House be accessible. While providing a place for all students to live is essential, this should not be the entirety of the University’s accessibility efforts; students who rely on wheelchairs are still unable to access the majority of the suites even in the designated accessible houses.

This is unacceptable. Those in charge of renovating the Houses should aim to make every room on campus, whether designed for classes or for living, easy to visit for everyone at the University, including those who use wheelchairs. When the renovated Dunster House opens in the fall, it will become the fourth fully accessible House. We applaud the University’s decision to make the first fully renovated House also fully accessible and hope this trend continues with the rest of the House renovations.

Ideally, every space on campus would be fully accessible right now, but we recognize that this will take some time to be the case. In the meantime, the burden falls on Harvard students to be more aware of accessibility concerns when planning events and in their day-to-day lives. Though many of us are rarely affected by the issue of accessibility, it is a pressing concern for many members of our community, and as such, we as students have a responsibility to help and look out for each other. Groups such as the Senior Class Committee must make accessibility one of their principal concerns, especially when planning events like the Senior Bars that are designed to bring the class together. The systematic exclusion of those who rely on wheelchairs for transportation runs counter to the goals of promoting class unity, even if the exclusion is unintentional. Accessibility is something we all must consider: It is simply the right thing to do.