By Emma Wilson and Gabriel Zucker
Campus accessibility has been a long, ongoing issue for students and faculty combined. As a campus, there have been concerns for the accessibility of campus buildings and facilities. This led to a push by community members advocating for a change in accommodations on campus, reforming the campus culture around disabilities, and critiquing ableist systems.
Aileen Yoo, director of News and Information, emphasized the university’s compliance with ADA Title II and its dedication to improving accessibility.
“The University fully recognizes that there are challenges with accessibility on campus,” Yoo said. “The reality is that there are physical and financial challenges to updating a campus that is more than a century old. We have worked diligently over the years to make programs and resources accessible for all members of our community.”
Creation and purpose of accesscph.org
Access CPH is a website that gives information to students, faculty, and staff with disabilities. It was created by Jim Graham, a natural resource professor who is disabled. Over a year ago, he saw that the school’s disability map of the campus was missing a lot of information.
“To my horror, it still shows an accessible map going down the stairs in front of the [Natural Resource Building],” said Graham. “I’ve been raising this issue — this specific issue — for over a year now, and it hasn’t been addressed.”
Over the summer, he decided to collect data around the school and compare it with the data from facilities. First, he tried to get funding from the school to bring on student workers to collect the data. He received no funding from the school and collected all of the data himself, which was very difficult due to his disability.
“We had a couple students work on it during one of their classes as part of their class project,” Graham said. “And then, over the summer, I just started going out and measuring, particularly the slopes and cross slopes, and that generated this map of the accessible areas. And then I combined it with the data from facilities, including some other data from facilities to create this map.”
All of his findings were put into a map with comparisons and notes between his findings and the facilities accessibility map. He found multiple problems across the campus that were legal, but still caused a lot of problems for students with disabilities.
“If you’re in a wheelchair and you’re on the fifth floor of BSS, there’s instructions for people to go down the stairs,” Graham said. “There’s no instructions for people in a wheelchair, which scares them, right? There are instructions now on the website, but they’re not in the buildings.”
Graham is still fighting for change on this campus. Although it is a slow process, he admits there is some progress. He said that the new ADA/504 Interim Coordinator Crystal Coombes is making a lot of improvements and changes to policy and the website. Graham believes the biggest problem is existing facilities on campus.
Stigma built into the foundation
Rosamel Benavides-Garb, Associate Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion & Campus Diversity Officer, sees one thing that has been happening at Cal Poly Humboldt for the last 30 years — an inaccessible campus.
“Colleagues, students, and staff that have disabilities, whether they’re visible or invisible, have never been part of the design of the university,” Benavides-Garb said. “This is not a nice formulation, but is part of a structural aspect of the institution. So, the historical 30 years or more — I would dare to say, the last 100 years — is the same.”
According to Benavides-Garb, Cal Poly Humboldt was structurally designed for a walking population, which excludes the people who need accommodations. This prompted him to question what was happening with this particular population of disabled individuals.
“Our colleagues are bringing to our attention and saying, ‘Please, let’s do something. Let’s do something about this. We’re a public university with an ethos of services. Let’s be truthful to that call,’” Benavides-Garb said.
Julie Myers, a student at Cal Poly Humboldt majoring in ecological restoration, feels unsupported by the institution as a whole.
“I changed my major because I didn’t really see the leniency, like the flexibility from professors that way. And ecological restoration seems to be a little more understandable than forestry, but I’m having a hard time because a lot of the professors, they’re not used to people with disabilities going to outdoor labs and stuff,” Myers said.
Alicia Martin, a student and advocate at Cal Poly Humboldt, discussed her journey and experiences with disability accommodations. She highlighted the challenges faced by students with disabilities, such as parking issues and the stigma around disclosing needs. Martin emphasized the importance of independence and disclosure in accommodations and criticized the current system for its flaws.
Martin co-founded the Adaptable Club in 2019 to support students with disabilities and address institutional barriers.
“I don’t care if you’re disabled,” Martin said. “We need allies, we need a club; we need a community for people with disabilities. And that’s when we started Adaptable, which was a club for students with disabilities on campus. Unfortunately, it went out of service once we all graduated and moved on, and we’re definitely hoping to get that back.”
Martin also expressed the need for better data collection and community involvement to improve retention and recruitment of students with disabilities. She expressed hope for the new interim president’s commitment to disability issues.
“The new president, one thing that I vividly remember him saying from his speech is he’s not only an ally, but he’s an accomplice,” Martin said. “He really cares about these issues surrounding people with disabilities. He has a background in special education, which is what I would like to major in with my PhD. So I’m very hopeful with this interim president. ”
Impact on students, teachers and staff
Aaron Donaldson, a lecturer in the Department of Communication Studies at Cal Poly Humboldt, emphasized the need for a campus-wide ADA rebuilding and criticized the university’s slow progress, calling for a cultural shift towards anti-ableism.
“There is an ableist culture on this campus,” Donaldson said. “People have walked by these problems for decades, and in order to fix that, we need a campus-wide recommitment to anti-ableism. This is infrastructure — every building, every walkway, every elevator. It’s cultural. People should not be walking by Telonicher House in silence.”
Despite the removal of bushes blocking railings next to the Art A building on B street, Donaldson feels that progress is too slow and not enough is being done to address ADA issues proactively.
“Other people who can walk should see the railing with the bushes and not say, ‘Those are cute,” but ask the question, “What happens if someone needs to grab those railings? Who do I talk to to get this railing cleared?’” Donaldson said.
Myers suggested improvements like better transportation to classrooms, more accessible buildings, and personalized accommodations.
“I’ve been complaining for years about the transportation, about the new shuttle, how maybe it could go to actual classrooms, and not just like the BSS or the Kinesiology building, maybe to the NR building or the forestry building,” Myers said. “The disability van could be whenever you need it, and you can call if you need it.”
“One, anyone can become disabled at any point in their life,” Martin said. “No one is immune. Two, there is what we call terror management theory and psychology. This fear of death, this fear of pain, this fear of becoming disabled, prevents [people] from wanting to address this. We want to avoid it. If we lean into it and we and we look at what that’s like, we have to empathize. We feel sympathy and pain.”
This article is the first part of a two-part story about a lack of accessibility for people on campus and the university’s response to these issues.
Emma Wilson is a senior public relations journalism student at Cal Poly Humboldt minoring in environmental ethics. Wilson is an environmental reporter and the science editor for the lumberjack. She is also the president of the Journalism Club of Cal Poly Humboldt. Wilson likes swimming, exploring the world’s vast environments, playing music on the radio, and making collages.
Gabriel Zucker is a senior journalism student at Cal Poly Humboldt. He is the photo editor for The Lumberjack. He loves photojournalism and wants to use his platform as a journalist to give a voice to the voiceless.