While Guilford strives to be inclusive and accommodating for students and staff, one small segment of the community seems to be overlooked. For the handicapped population on campus, inclusion can be as daunting as the heavy wooden doors blocking their entrance to numerous campus buildings.

The final project for Principled Problem Solving (PPS) scholars and seniors Marissa Dungan, Reid Perkins, Darius Verdell, and junior Amelia McLaughlin investigated the accessibility of buildings around campus for students, faculty, and staff who are physically disabled.

The group recently presented their findings to the community, with a presentation that scored each building and offered both short and long-term recommendations for improvement.

“In the beginning of our research, we believed that the topic of disability access would be a simple issue of minor renovations and updates to facilities: putting some buttons here and widening a door there and building a ramp there, etc.,” said Perkins, who is himself in a wheelchair.

“But the more we uncovered, the more we were able to see complex issues systemic within the Guilford College community,” said Perkins. “We began to understand the concerns facing a significant population of the Guilford Community, whom the core values seem to overlook.”

The PPS scholars group examined accessibility in numerous ways, from building entrances and multi-floor access to the heights of water fountains and elevator buttons.

The groups’ presentation highlighted issues such as the lack of access to water fountains and elevator buttons that are too high to be reached from a wheelchair, heavy doors that lack automated, push-button entry systems, and a complete lack of access to the North Apartments except by road.

Despite the seeming lack of options in housing for students with disabilities, circumstances have improved.

“It used to be we’d keep students in Milner, in that same room all four years,” said Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of Students Aaron Fetrow. “But once we started having first-year only housing, then it wasn’t very fair to have a junior or senior on first floor Milner with all these freshmen. So, then we started trying to figure out ways to have options for those students (with disabilities).”

The PPS scholars group also voiced student complaints about common social places being inaccessible particularly the lounges, kitchens, and the Milner patio.

“We’re doing everything we can to make it so those gathering spaces are accessible,” said Fetrow. “The Greenleaf, areas outside the Greenleaf, most of those areas are accessible, and that’s what we want. But to make everything accessible becomes really cost-prohibitive, to try to make every floor of every building accessible, retro, because those buildings are 50 or 60 years old.”

Another concern the group raised was an inequality in classroom resources.

Most classrooms, they explained, have only desks and not tables that students in wheelchairs can sit. Instead, they have to turn a desk around so that the writing surface is facing them, while the back of the chair faces the front of the classroom, effectively coming between them and the rest of the class.

As part of their efforts, the group posted signs on doors, water fountains and elevators around campus that ask ‘Is this handicapped accessible?’ in order to increase visibility for their project and awareness of the obstacles disabled members of the community face.

“A lot of these are just issues of awareness,” said Dungan. “If someone was thinking about a person in a wheelchair trying to maneuver through these spaces they might think that they need to remove the clutter, but as we see in a lot of these cases it’s a simple lack of awareness.”

While problems like clutter in front of elevators can be easily corrected by the community, larger issues require the attention of such Guilford College initiatives as the Strategic Long Range Plan (SLRP) and the Diversity Plan, both of which the group focused heavily on for their research and recommendations.

“According to the Diversity Plan, the needs of disabled students seem to be placed on the back seat compared to other diversity concerns like race, sex, ethnicity, sexual identity and international origin,” said Perkins. “Whenever the plan discusses the goals of achieving diversity within the college, it refers to these five areas of emphasis.”

Perkins found similar shortcomings with the SLRP.

“The SLRP is an excellent plan for outlining the goals and benchmarks for the future development of Guilford College,” said Perkins. “Unfortunately, disability access issues regarding the renovation of all restructures and the development of new facilities are not mentioned within the plan.”

The group explained that, although a recent law passed under the Americans with Disabilities Act stipulates that all community spaces be fully accessible by 2011, a 1979 law serves as a grandfather clause to allow historic buildings to circumvent current ADA regulations.

“Students aren’t flocking to Guilford if they have these certain disabilities because Guilford doesn’t really have anything in place for them,” said Dungan. “Because of that, we have a really low number of blind and deaf students.”

With a lack of resources and inadequate planning in place, Fetrow’s explanation of the hard-to-access Milner laundry room accurately describes the status of accessibility across campus.

“There is accessibility,” said Fetrow, “but it’s not very convenient.”