March 22, 2007

Limited Accessibility in Thomas Hall
Jon Moffett
jrm001@marietta.edu

Marietta College has nine Core Values.  These core values, which are essentially the blueprint for the college’s view on morals and ethics, range from Marietta being a Residential College to helping with Financial Planning.  One Core Value that MC really stresses is Internationalization.  In a nutshell, this means that Marietta is a place where students from all around the globe can come and not have to worry about feeling like an outsider or be ostracized.  In other words, Marietta College is accepting.  But there’s another ‘acc’ word that Marietta may have to worry about:  accessible.

If students with disabilities were to come to Marietta, they’d have a significantly harder time trying to enjoy their time here and just go about their everyday lives. Although the majority of Marietta’s academic buildings, dormitories, and other facilities are handicap accessible, most are only accessible on the first floor. The very heart of campus, the Gilman Student Center, is even a task for handicapped people to overcome in order to be involved in the daily rituals of a college student.

The Gilman Student Center is one of the main hubs of activity for students at Marietta. It houses the Career Center, the mail room, the campus bookstore, and most importantly, the main dining facility on campus. If a handicapped student were to enter the bookstore and then wish to eat at Gilman, they’d have to completely leave the building, go around and out of their way to find accessible ramps, and then circle the building to the front just to reenter for lunch or dinner. By standing at the top of the outside stairs in front of Gilman, a student can look down and see the labyrinth of stairs and hills which make up this area.

Although Gilman is one of the most popular places for students to go, it isn’t even close to being the most necessary. Most of the academic buildings are also poorly designed when it comes to handicap accessibility. Although a large majority of the academic buildings do have elevators in them in order to accommodate for students with disabilities, sometimes just getting in the building itself is a chore. Due to Marietta’s hilly terrain, it becomes difficult to navigate the landscape at times.

Most of the school’s facilities are completely accessible to students with physical disabilities because they have the luxury of an elevator. However, one of the college’s staples in the academic field isn’t so lucky. Thomas Hall, which houses the English, History, Foreign Language and Political Science departments as well as others, does not have an elevator in it. Thomas Hall is accessible via a large concrete ramp on the building’s Northeastern side. However, without an elevator, students who need special accommodations for physical disabilities, and classes that contain one or more of these students, are restricted to the building’s ground floor.

“It’s sad, really,” one MC faculty member stated, “it’s sad that if a student with a disability were have a class in Thomas [Hall] that he or she would be forced to remain on only one floor. This building houses so many departments and yet it doesn’t have to acceptable means to accommodate for all students.”

The idea of adding an elevator to Thomas Hall has been tossed around for the past few years at Marietta, but nothing has been done yet. It is estimated that the addition of an elevator to Thomas would cost approximately $1 million. With the projects that Marietta is currently undergoing, such as the new library, this project has been put on hold for the time being.

Elizabeth Lehman, a junior and member of the Chi Omega sorority, spends a lot of time in Thomas Hall.  She thinks it’s unfortunate that the building lacks in the necessary accessibility options.

“You know, I’ve always wanted to go around campus in a wheelchair and really see how accessible our campus is.  I don't believe it's really accessible.  I seriously wanted to just show up in a wheelchair one day and try to go to classes,” said Lehman.

Lehman also added, “what if someone got hurt?  They’d have to switch all of the classes in Thomas and move them either downstairs or to a different building.  Maybe they'd decide it's too much of an inconvenience and have the chair bound person meet privately with the instructor.  Those who have a disability already feel different and separate from the rest of society.  They don't want to come to college and be a stand out because they can't get to their classrooms or residence halls, Gillman, or Izzy's.  They want to stand out for their abilities, what they can do not what they can't.”