On August 16th, 2023, The University of Vermont sent an email to students living on campus this upcoming semester. This email stated that ResLife will be working with “campus partners” to move residential elevators to an open / CATcard system.
While this is great news, and the University deserves credit for taking action, this article (written before the announcement), now aims to highlight the harm that the limited-access key system policy created for disabled students on campus.
Orientation has just ended. Your belongings have found a home after a few days of reorganizing. Soon you’ll realize that the elevator you used during move-in to make this dorm your home is no longer working. It must be broken, you’ll think at first, but eventually, you’ll realize that the elevators aren’t meant to be utilized freely.
During move-in, and move-out, the elevators are unlocked, and free to use by all. Other than that, you’ll need a temporary key unless you live in a newer residential hall. Good luck getting one. Most front-desks are only supplied with one or two keys, meaning that in a dorm hall with 300+ residents, the key will likely be unavailable for check-out, or if it is available, you’ll need to return it as soon as possible.
Ultimately, the elevator remains unused by the majority of students for this reason. But what about temporarily and permanently disabled students who need access to an elevator to get to their dorm or the dorm of a friend?
In February of 2022, Alex, a resident in Mercy Hall, who had suffered a significant leg injury, was unable to traverse the stairwell to his third story dorm. Another resident, Peyton, was loaned an elevator key the previous morning also on account of a broken leg.
Alex asked the front-desk for a key, and was told the front-desk was only equipped with one. The front-desk then called the on-duty Residential Education Team (RET) member who was on Central Campus. RET was under the impression that buildings were equipped with multiple keys, so when their member arrived, they were puzzled.
It was decided the only solution would be to find the box that held the office manager’s elevator key. This box could not be located, and so the RET member called and woke up the Trinity Residential Director, who was able to identify where the box was supposed to be, but noted that the office manager often moved the box without telling them. After this call concluded, Alex had been waiting in the lobby for over an hour.
The front-desk then called UVM Police Services for assistance and were told that they were unwilling to send an officer to unlock the elevator, as it was Reslife’s responsibility to maintain them. It was now 11pm, and without an alternative, RAs took the key from Peyton. Alex was finally in his room after two hours of waiting.
After Alex’s experience, an email was sent out on March 15th, 2022 by Darcie Klassen, then director of Residential Life, to staff in the Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion about elevator keys, outlining the current elevator key policy. Reslife’s solution to this avoidable situation was to stock McAuley’s front desk (the front desk Mercy hall uses) with additional keys. After two weeks, the keys were removed, and the front-desk was again only equipped with a single key.
A similar story comes from Molly, a co-author, who writes, “Early in the (2022-2023) school year, I got stuck downstairs in McAuley Hall. The front-desk wasn’t open and there was no warning that the elevator was closed. Even though I was registered with Student Accessibility Services (SAS), I received no notice of the closure.
I had just gotten back from the dining hall and was planning on touching up my room. I luckily had my cane and was technically able to make it up the stairs with my mobility aid, but I had bags and the pain made it impossible to climb three steep flights of stairs to access my room. Nowhere in the lobby was there signage indicating who I should call to access an elevator. I ended up calling ResLife. I was told to ask the front desk for a key, which I explained was closed. I was put on hold and transferred multiple times before being given a helpful answer.
I was told to wait in the McAuley lobby for someone from central to arrive with an elevator key. An hour passed, and nobody had arrived, so I contacted the same number but nobody answered. Friends passed through the lobby and my roommate ended up waiting with me for another hour. After two hours, a frustrated looking man walked into the building. He made sure to mention that he had walked from central in the heat to get me the key.
I was stunned as to why he seemingly thought it was my fault that I was stuck downstairs. I pivoted my body away from him with tears in my eyes. I was embarrassed, angry, and frustrated. I went to the elevator door and finally was able to step in.
I later learned that the front desk did not even have a key at the time and that this ordeal would have occurred even if the desk was open. This situation was easily avoidable yet turned into an hours-long ordeal that left everyone involved emotional.” Sometimes, even if there is a key, the elevator isn’t working.
Students with relevant SAS accommodations are regularly not notified when an elevator is out-of-order, and any physical notice is located solely in the building’s lobby. This is a problem for people who rely on the elevator to traverse their dorm building, as these people often find out the elevator is out-of-order when attempting to leave the dorm building to get to class.
Ariel was a resident of UHeights North last year. When reached for comment, she said, “The elevator broke several times throughout the year, always for [hours, or in once instance days] at a time. I would have to email professors that I might be missing class, or have my then-partner be an accessibility pony and carry me up and down the stairs so I could go to class or get food.”
Additionally, because Ariel could only traverse UHeights using the elevator in her tower, she only had access to the part of the building that connected to her elevator, leaving her locked out of more than half the building she lived in.
Multiple elevators have expired safety inspections papers listed in the elevators. In two documented cases these safety inspection papers had expired for over a year. The University should not be operating elevators with expired safety inspection papers as these elevators, once inspection expires, become potential hazards. These images are a sampling of the full scale of this issue.
Source: DSU, taken 6/8/23 DSU, taken 6/3/23 DSU, taken 6/1/23
In a report sent by an advocate (who has requested to remain anonymous) to UVM
Housing Hell and The Gadfly, we learned that Reslife’s policy may violate the
standards set in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Specifically, it may
violate ADA policy that requires there to be an accessible Path of Travel, which is
a continuous and unblocked way that a building can be navigated on foot or using a
mobility aid. Elevators in paths of travel are required to be kept working so that
they can be “accessible to and usable by those people they are intended to benefit.”
The full report is hosted at this QR Code, we encourage you to read it:
Elevator access isn’t just a problem of inconvenience, it’s also a social problem. Because the elevator’s are largely inaccessible (especially at night), disabled students that require elevators to traverse dorm buildings are often unable to visit friends in dorm halls other than their own.
Getting a key into a hall that is not your own is more difficult to explain to an administrator - as though they do not expect disabled people to have the need to socialize and move around campus like their able-bodied peers. Stairwells are equipped with CATcard access, meaning any student can get into the stairwell at any time with just their ID.
The elevators in most halls do not have this feature and, without a friend who has the physical key, visiting students are left unable to use them. This makes it extremely difficult or impossible for disabled students to socialize in dorm halls, participate in dorm activities with friends, or even form/facilitate these friendships in the first place, effectively isolating the disabled student body from their able-bodied peers.
Problems with elevator access in-dorm buildings are well-documented, but what can the University do to solve these accessibility problems? The Disabled Student Union (DSU) recommends multiple steps to address this issue.
At the bare minimum, Residential Life could start tomorrow by notifying all residents of a residential hall, especially those with accommodations, when their elevator(s) are out-of-order.
This way, at the very least, students who rely on elevators can be made aware of a potential problem before it causes inconvenience.
The most crucial solution suggested is to renovate our already existing dorm elevators to be CATcard accessible. Elevator usage shouldn’t be locked behind a sometimes inaccessible key. Every student has a CAT ID, and some elevators are already CATcard accessible. Making every elevator CATcard accessible would expand access to all students, and not require students to go through an entire department’s bureaucracy to avoid stairs.
Days before this article’s deadline approached, Reslife announced, or at least we found out, in an email to on-campus students sent on August 16th, that a new and open elevator policy will be implemented starting this year, focusing on “open/CATcard access.”
Reslife’s new approach to elevator policy is a win for all students. Not much information is currently known about the policy besides that all residential hall elevators will eventually be renovated to be CATcard accessible, and that these renovations will happen in multiple waves. It is unclear how long the process of CATcard integration will take, which halls will be integrated first, who will have access to what elevators, or what accommodations will be given during renovations to students who rely on their dorm’s elevator.
This policy shift will likely address both the accessibility and social aspects that the limited key policy causes. This upcoming change does not erase the pain that the existing key policy has caused, and will likely cause during renovations, but does signify that the University is aware of the problem, and as of the 2023 fall semester, will be taking adequate steps to address the problem.
While researching this article, the more stories we heard from students, the more frustrated we found ourselves becoming at how seemingly simple the problem of elevator accessibility has been to solve, and how disastrous the consequences of inaction have been.
The red-tape bureaucracy at the University has created a system where entire teams are left in the dark about the availability of elevator keys, students are brought to tears trying to access their home, and students need someone to carry them up and down the stairs when elevators don’t work.
The state of accessibility at UVM has been an outrage, and the University’s delayed response, taking years to address the problem of elevator access, has been a failure of the administration to offer adequate accommodations to their students.
The term, “Reasonable Accommodations,” often used by the University, reflects this reality. This language implies that some accommodations needed by students are seen as unreasonable. The accommodations requested by students who require them in order to not live in a state of constant stress and or pain and exhaustion are not unreasonable and it is unreasonable to think otherwise.