Gail Durkin ‘26
Opinions Editor
Imagine this: you are a wheelchair-using high school senior. You are currently applying to college, and Holy Cross is your dream school. What’s not to like? It’s prestigious, has great academics, a strong football team, and a gorgeous campus. You’ve spent lots of time looking at the website, and it seems like the perfect school for you! You scheduled a tour of the campus with your parents and you are just so excited. However, when you get there, you start to realize Holy Cross may not be the best fit for you when you struggle to find a wheelchair-accessible entrance to Fenwick and the admissions office. How is a person in a wheelchair supposed to easily get from place to place on this campus? They can’t. This is something I’ve noticed since arriving at Holy Cross– it isn’t very accessible. Our location up on beautiful Mount St. James is beneficial in some ways– it allows for a spectacular view of Worcester, for one thing. But, being on a hill means that stairs are almost a guaranteed part of your walk to class, to work, or anywhere in between. Me and my friends have even tested this– we once decided to try getting from Fitton Field to Hogan without taking any stairs. It simply isn’t possible– we thought we were clever taking the elevator in the parking garage and then the elevator from Stein, but guess what’s outside Stein? More stairs! I also noticed that the “wheelchair accessible” entrance to Loyola has a massive bump that would be really difficult to get a wheelchair, whether electric or manual, over. This really made me think: how would a wheelchair user– or any person with a disability that affects walking, for that matter– get around campus? One answer came to mind: accessibility vans. I have seen these vans around campus. They are supposedly available for any student who is having difficulty getting from place to place, whether due to injury or due to a disability. However, I thought about how I would feel if I had to rely entirely on another person to get to my everyday activities– I don’t think it would feel very good. But, we don’t give students with disabilities any other choice. There aren’t really any ramps on campus, and not every building has a functional elevator (I’m sure those of you living on Easy Street this year can attest to the fact that the elevators don’t always work). Yes, we have some accessibility accommodations– Hogan has a wheelchair lift, and Kimball has a ramp. But a lot of that is only in place because Holy Cross is required to meet ADA regulations. There were even some last-minute conversions of the RA rooms into “accessible” rooms in order to meet these regulations. However, this campus still is not really navigable for students with disabilities. It’s something we need to work on– it will be challenging, but we need to make our campus accessible to everyone, not just able-bodied people.
Featured imaged courtesy of USNews
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