The first days of college, exciting as they may be, are filled with challenges for every first-year student. Being a student in a wheelchair adds a unique complication to one's first few weeks at Bowdoin.
This year the College welcomed two first years in wheelchairs who bear the distinction of being Bowdoin's first mobility-impaired students. Though the school has long had visitors in wheelchairs?from alums to parents?this year marks the first time that two people in wheelchairs are on campus every day for the whole school year.
Since the two handicapped students confirmed that they were coming to the Bowdoin last spring, the College has made a number changes to the campus, small and large, in an effort to make the all of Bowdoin more accessible.
"We enacted changes [before the two students arrived this year]," Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Accommodations for Students with Diasabilities Joann Canning said in an interview with the Orient.
The changes undertaken by the College included adding a ramp to the Dudley Coe Health center, taking "seating out of the VAC auditorium," adding handicap-accessible door-opening buttons to Kanbar Hall, installing railings along the ramp that leads to the dining level of Moulton Union, and lowering the public computers on the first floor of Moulton, among other projects.
Emma Verrill '10, one of the two students in a wheelchair, was in contact with Canning over the spring and summer to plan out how things were going to work here.
"She's been very helpful," Verrill said.
Before the school year began, Canning and Verrill toured campus together to see which buildings were accessible and which were not.
"Not every single space needs to be accessible," Canning said.
"It's really more about coordinating the spaces on campus," she said.
Sometimes classes might need to be switched to a different building to accommodate a mobility-impaired student.
"For instance, a drawing class in not accessible," Canning said.
"[Drawing classes are held] on the top floor of the VAC [Visual Arts Center], which a person in a wheelchair cannot access, so we would be switching drawing and painting if one of these students were to take a drawing class. We would have to move a drawing class down to McLellan and put a painting class in the VAC. So you can imagine that's a lot of equitment we would be moving and a lot of people would be scrambling around, but that is what we would need to do," she said.
So how many buildings on campus are accessible? It is hard to know.
Canning says "accessible" can be a slippery term, making it impossible to quantify how many spaces on campus are truly accessible to a person in a wheelchair.
For instance, the first floor of Sills Hall is wheelchair-accessible, but the rest of the building is not. Cleveland Hall is "technically accessible" but a person in a wheelchair has to get to Cleveland by going through the Druckenmiller Hall. Hubbard Hall is also technically accessible but requires someone in a wheelchair to "go up, down and around and through the stacks and over and in," Canning said.
"So do I think it's a great building as far as accessibility? No. But technically it is 'accessible,'" she said.
Verrill has found it particularly difficult to be unable to visit her friends at some of the other freshman bricks.
"It is kind of hard having only three of the freshman dorms accessible because I have friends in the other dorms and I can't stop by and see them," she said.
"You will notice that Appleton, actually, is not accessible," Canning said.
"It was the feeling of the historical preservation society that it would throw off the uniformity of the bricks [to make Appleton accessible]. Because we have other spaces that are compliant and accessible, the historical society won out on that," she added.
"It was pretty much the historic preservation influence all along that we not alter the exterior of the buildings," Director of Capital Projects Donald V. Borkowski said.
"Our life would have been a lot easier if we would have been able to put ramps to the building?we would have had full ADA [American with Disabilities Act] access on all eight of the first-year dorms," he added.
After the current renovations are completed only five of the eight freshman dorms will comply with ADA accessibility standards, according to Borkowski.
Earl G. Shettleworth Jr., the director of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission?part of the Maine state government?sees the situation differently. The decision not to make some buildings accessible was joint one between Bowdoin and the commission, he insisted.
"It was finally reached as a conclusion that the accessibility that was being either installed or improved in all of the other dormitories would more than offset the inability to do it in this particular one," Shettleworth said, referring to Appleton.
"This was a case where we all agreed we needed to respect the historic integrity of the building," he added.
Verrill has trouble believing that making all the first-year bricks handicap-accessible would mar the historic integrity of the buildings.
"I went to Florence, Italy, this summer and had no problems getting into any buildings there, which is very interesting because most of them were built" hundreds of years ago, Verrill said.
"It was very interesting when I came here and they said that the Maine Historic Preservation Commission was protecting some of the buildings" and thus the College could not make them handicap-accessible."