Many of you have probably found yourself injured at some point in life ? broken bones, torn ligaments, strained knees, sprained ankles, anything that lands you incapacitated in some way and makes you appreciate the fact that you can walk, see, write or function the way you did before you were injured.
I have found myself injured on many occasions. One might even go so far as to call me ?accident-prone? or ?a disaster magnet.? Although I have never broken a bone, I have done everything else you can think of when it comes to injuries. Naturally then, I have spent a lot of time with casts, walking boots, braces, slings, crutches and wheelchairs. However, it was not until recently that I fully realized the trouble a student with a disability must go through on a college campus.
Perhaps BYU is the exception to the rule; I have not spent an extended period of time on other college campuses, so I don?t really know. But I can say that my eyes were opened for the week I recently spent in a wheelchair.
First of all, there is a large effort nationwide to make buildings universally accessible. However, I?m not sure the principle has been fully realized. Although many buildings add ramps and elevators, these are often in the hardest places to get to or are not the sufficient size or incline.
Going to school where half of the campus is on another level and the upper level of campus is a series of hills in varying degrees lends itself to an extraordinary arm workout. I might even go so far as to suggest a self-propelled wheelchair ride as an exercise technique to strengthen arm muscles.
But on a more serious note, the accessibility issue is a disturbing one. Thankfully I only had to spend a week in a wheelchair, and I often found charitable people who took a few minutes from their busy schedule to wheel me up a ramp that might have caused me further injury due to an untimely ?wheelie.?
I would like to illustrate my point with a few specific examples: First, the location and functionality of the newly refurbished Jesse Knight Building.
The building looks fantastic and is certainly easier to navigate through than the previous building design. However, the fact still remains that the elevator does not line up with individual floors and now the miss-matched levels are traversed by wheelchair users over ramps which, I found on several occasions, one must rely heavily upon the use of a handrail to reach the top.
There was an additional ?universally accessible? entrance added on the west side of the building, but, again, the ramps into the building, found only on the east and west sides, are steep and often crowded with other walkers.
Several other buildings on campus share similar problems. One can only enter the Harris Fine Arts Center from the southeast entrance because that is the only location of a ramp. Accessible entrance to the McKay building is only on the west side. One must use the bottom doors in the Eyring Science Center and then go on a search for the elevator in order to reach the main floor of that building.
Thankfully there are buildings on campus where all entrances, or most, are on the ground level. These include the Brimhall Building, Joseph Smith Building, Talmage Building. Even the Joseph F. Smith Building has easily accessible elevators.
Temporarily disabled or not, perhaps the issue of accessibility ought to be more seriously looked at, for one might notice that elevators and ramps are found in the most inconvenient and distant places.
Brittanie Morris is a senior from Camarillo, Calif., majoring in print journalism and minoring in music.