*Editor’s Note: Source McKenzie Maggiore is staff writer Sydney Brammer’s roommate.
Despite Point Loma Nazarene University’s Educational Access Center (EAC), campus facilities and transportation making strides to meet ADA (Americans with Disability Act) standards, accessibility challenges persist. Aging infrastructure has left elevators out of order, revealing a gap between the reality of resources and ADA compliance for the physically disabled.
According to the campus master plan, the campus is to be completely wheelchair accessible with more sidewalks, ramps and automatic doors.
According to Pamela Harris, associate dean of the EAC, there is an accessibility map getting built into an app, so any student can easily access the locations of elevators and single stall restrooms.
“That doesn’t help the students who are on campus [right now] who need help,” Helen Blackstone-Gardner, former PLNU student, said.
Blackstone-Gardner, a Christian studies major, transferred out of PLNU due to health and accessibility reasons. Living with POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), a condition that causes heart rate spikes and unpredicted fainting, she advocated for two accessible on-campus shuttles and a wheelchair accessible golf cart. The shuttles were added in 2022 and a golf cart was added this year.
She said that the EAC told her Goodwin Hall was the most accessible dorm, and she was placed there her first year at PLNU. However, it’s located at the bottom of a hill, and as a wheelchair user, Blackstone-Gardner said that prevented her from getting herself to class. After a lot of self advocacy, the EAC transferred her to Klassen Hall, where there’s still a hill, but it’s not as steep.
“At first they [EAC] didn’t really do as much as I needed,” Blackstone-Gardner said. “But as soon as I went into the office and sat down with doctor Harris, they started doing stuff for me.”
In the case that the accessible shuttles are out of commission, transportation informs the EAC and they provide rides to registered students, according to Harris.
The wheelchair accessible and typical golf carts are used as a “supplementary source,” where the shuttle is the primary form of transportation, Ty Burdette, EAC accessibility coordinator, said. “A shutdown of the on-campus shuttle is very rare.”
But it does happen.
According to Blackstone-Gardner, when the accessible shuttle was out of commission, she’d have students push her up the hill from Klassen Hall. She said she made a lot of connections with PLNU administration to be able to contact them when an elevator wasn’t working or when she needed a ride.
Being the student that played a central role in getting the accessible shuttles and golf cart to campus, Blackstone-Gardner was feeling more discouraged than ever.
“It was kind of a full time job trying to take care of myself and I felt a huge responsibility placed on me to be the voice of disability at school – it became a thing where I was not able to focus on my school work because there were so many problems and I just couldn’t handle it,” she said. “Nobody [seemed] to understand me, my peers [didn’t] seem to understand me, just because of a lack of information.”
If the shuttle is full of students or not in operation, the recommended step would be to call public safety for transportation, and if they’re not able, then the EAC is the last resort, said Burdette.
Although not listed on their website, the EAC said that their policy is that they do not provide rides to and from living areas, as that’s what the accessible shuttle is intended for. The shuttle stops at all dorms, including the Flex apartments at the bottom of the hill near Klassen. This makes it difficult for disabled students who live in apartments 44-49 – the middle and top of the hill – from being able to reach the stop. The next closest available pick-up area from Flex is Clara Colt Hall, which is an uphill climb, given there’s about 50 feet of elevation gain from dormitories to main campus.
“It’s not a perfect system, but if you live either at the top or the bottom or in the middle, then one of the two stops should be accessible to you,” Burdette said.
The shuttle stop wasn’t accessible for McKenzie Maggiore, fourth-year health and human performance major.
Five days before the start of the 2024 fall semester, Maggiore left the Jacobs Medical Center at University of California, San Diego Health after having total reconstructive surgery on her left leg after nearly having to undergo an amputation of the limb. Despite providing the required documentation from her medical provider, it wasn’t easy at first for her to get the transportation she needed from Flex, where she lives due to the EAC’s policy.
Maggiore was given the option to do school completely remote with her severe circumstance. Yet, she insisted on attending class in-person for human connection and to have the option to ask questions and interact with classmates, she said. With her efforts to receive her education like she normally would, she found it difficult to receive the help she needed, she said.
“I don’t think they realized the extent of my injury, even though they had my doctor’s note,” Maggiore said. “I don’t think they realized that it was really difficult for me to get to class.”
After her direct communication with the EAC, they saw the severity of her injury and told her that she would be the exception to their policy of not providing rides to and from living areas.
“I did have to plead my case to get them to make the exception,” Maggiore said.
All but one of Maggiore’s classes are in the kinesiology building, located in between the Golden Gymnasium and tennis courts, surrounded by staircases. In this unique circumstance, the shuttle doesn’t stop near those classes, so she needed a ride from the EAC to bring her closer to the area to avoid the stairs.
Maggiore was able to schedule the rides she needed without difficulty after their conversation, she said.
“They’ve helped a tremendous amount,” Maggiore said. “The nature of this campus is difficult, and just because there were difficulties doesn’t mean they weren’t trying. The EAC definitely has put in a lot of effort to help me, and I’ve successfully made it to every class.”
Harris said, it’s been a long-time coming in gradually making the campus more accessible. Every few years, more things are done to meet their goals of increased accessibility. Harris said that if there were a current handicapped student, the process would be moving quicker.
There is not a high demand for transportation accommodations, according to Harris. 14-16% of the roughly 400 that are registered with the EAC, have visible disabilities, physical and not.
“It’s definitely not the majority of our students, but there’s not a reason not to do it [provide transportation],” Harris said. “We are going to meet every student’s needs.”
According to Burdette, there are two student workers who work at a time to ensure that a student who scheduled a ride will receive it.
“We haven’t reached a point where we’re stretched too thin,” he said.
“If we have availability in the moment and the shuttle is full and the student is late for class and physically can’t move, we’re willing to make on-the-fly decisions in that regard; but ultimately we uphold our policy that students fill out the form ahead of time [to schedule a ride],” Burdette said.
According to Harris, if a student is registered with the EAC well before the start of the semester and can’t access a building their class is in, they can change a class to another building that’s more accessible.
The PLNU main campus has five ADA automatic doors and 18 elevators – including the ADA lift on the north side of the Greek Amphitheatre. Among the elevators, there are currently two out of order: all levels in the Cooper Music Hall and the first level of the Ryan Library.
Victoria Barajas-Miranda, a third-year organizational communication major and Point Loma Singers member, said that the Cooper elevator has been out of commission for about three weeks. Denise Nelson, director of Ryan Library, said that the first floor elevator button was discovered to be malfunctioning on Oct. 1.
Elevators are checked every six months as part of a routine maintenance, according to Eric Remley, assistant director of facilities. When the office of campus facilities is notified of a malfunction, they are typically fixed within a few days but can take up to a month, depending on availability of parts and state licensed elevator mechanics who must perform the repairs.
“They [elevators] are starting to age out,” Remley said. “They’re getting more and more challenging, and one of the things that we’re continuing to do is remind everybody, as we move forward with deferred maintenance, that it’s time for them to be completely renovated.”
The Rohr science building’s elevators have recently been renovated. For older buildings such as Cabrillo Hall, renovating elevators in compliance with the ADA isn’t as simple.
The ADA is a federal law established in 1990 and requires accommodations in public spaces, like buildings and transportation. Because the campus was built in 1973, it was not made to be accessible. With historic landmarks like Cabrillo Hall, these buildings only need to be legally compliant with the ADA standards of the year they were built. The newer campus buildings, like Rohr science, are up to date with the current standards, which explains why they’re more accessible.
The responsibility of facilities is ensuring buildings are up to code based on the year it was built, Remley said. Even if the university wanted to make a building more accessible, they are restricted to the ADA standards of the year the building was built.
From 2022-2023, there were more frequent elevator issues, according to Blackstone-Gardner. She used a wheelchair for about four months during her two years at PLNU and said that automatic and ID-access doors were also an issue. According to her, there wasn’t enough time for her to scan her ID, back up so the door could open and then make it inside before it shut.
Professor Denise Necoechea, a PLNU adjunct professor, teaches an introduction to disability studies course that covers concepts of a lack of equity, inclusion and acceptability for the disabled community.
Established in 2020, the course is offered in the fall and spring semesters and is now a certificate program. The purpose is to rethink disability, Necoechea said. Students analyze equal access for people with disabilities in the workplace, healthcare and higher education.
“Let’s not always look at disability as something that needs to be fixed,” Necoechea said. “It downplays the person who has a disability where they don’t have equal access or opportunity to participate.”
There’s always room for improvement, Necoechea said.
Classrooms have “inadequate space for wheelchair users to navigate spaces comfortably,” she said. “I see the inaccessibility of our bathrooms – the doors are very heavy to open up.”
Carly Coble, a second-year health and human performance major, took Necoechea’s class and is leading PLNU’s Delta Alpha Pi club that promotes disability awareness and provides a welcoming outlet for people with disabilities.
She found the class “eye-opening,” and learned to understand disability etiquette and the ways people have been impacted by their disability.
“One of my goals is to increase awareness,” Coble said. “There are a lot of opportunities that we can include more people if we just make it more accessible and give them a chance to thrive.”
Recognizing the efforts made by all involved parties, this campus is not where it could be. As the campus becomes more accessible, more physically disabled students may decide to attend the school, Harris said.
Blackstone-Gardner wished the EAC listened to students on “the first bet” instead of “making us beg.”
“You shouldn’t have to fight so hard just to be able to live life just like everybody else,” she said. “I felt like I was spending all of my energy just fighting and fighting to get the same standard of care that everybody else was getting on campus. The equity wasn’t there for me.”
Necoechea said she thinks the university should gain the disability community’s insight for improvements.
“Those with disabilities know what works best and what they need,” she said. “I don’t have a disability, so I might not experience the world in the same manner and see the shortcomings.”
The EAC emphasizes the commitment of the university’s staff to support physically disabled students while navigating the required protocols.
“We are good people who want to help,” Burdette said. “Our goal isn’t to say ‘no’ to people who are asking for help. There’s just checks and balances and steps that have to be taken in order to ensure that we can provide an accommodation.”
The EAC office is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Fridays. Students are unable to request a ride outside of those hours, but the shuttle runs until midnight Monday through Friday.
