Student Research Bringing Attention to Campus Accessibility

The path leading to the only entrance to the Coates Library.
Click here to view 360 degree photos (photos by Nick Smetzer).

By Nick Smetzer

As summer approaches, plans are being made to renovate portions of Trinity's upper and lower campus. While standard updates to older buildings may be welcome, students, faculty and staff at Trinity have been making a particular effort to improve campus accessibility.

Graduating senior Cathy Terrace, majoring anthropology, has spent her last year at Trinity studying the campus’ history with accessibility, and has noted several areas that pose particular challenges to students.

“Students with mobility impairments who can’t take stairs, for example, are denied easy access to a lot of areas on campus,” said Terrace. An example is the Storch building. "You have to physically leave the building if you leave either half of the basement floor of Storch.”

She also identified the Dicke Smith building and the Coates Library as especially challenging to navigate. “It’s not enough to design the building and then say ‘okay, now how do me make it accessible, how do we put in accommodations,’ because I think that already has accommodations as secondary, or as an afterthought,” she said. “If Trinity were to approach buildings in the master plan with this sense of ‘we need to maximize accessibility at every step of the way,’ then I think you would have more meaningful accommodations on campus.”

Terrace’s research was presented not only to the Anthropology department, but also to Trinity’s architectural team and campus planners. As of April 2017, Trinity’s master plan sparsely mentions direct improvements to accessibility. However, the master plan mentions ideas such as creating connecting structure among Chapman, Halsell and the Coates Library. This certainly suggests some improvement to the particular obstacles posed by Coates Library.

The “Hill Connector,” a proposed improvement to the stairs connecting lower and upper campus, likewise suggests improvement to accessibility between upper and lower campus and to Storch in particular. But the plan itself remains vague on whether or not the connector will include anything more than an improvement to existing stairs.

The master plan’s focus on prioritizing the pedestrian experience of those on campus is certainly well in-line with the architectural goals of O’Neil Ford, the original designer of Trinity’s San Antonio campus. However, as Terrace points out, the secondary treatment of accessibility throughout the document may still be concerning for those with mobility impairments.

“We have this idea that there are disabled people and non-disabled people, and we’ve got this kind of medical idea that you can define disability by its diagnosis,” said Dr. Richard Reed, professor of Sociology and Anthropology, and Terrace’s research advisor. “[Terrace’s] research helps show that it’s not that there's some abled people and some disabled people, but it's the environment that renders some of us abled and some of us disabled.” Her research therefore "is a radical rethinking of what disability is on campus."

Students without mobility impairments are also invested in renovations across Trinity’s campus. “It’s really hard to get from one end of the campus to the other, even when elevators are working, and especially if you’re short on time,” said Cristina Kodadek, a junior. “Trinity’s campus is beautiful, but buildings like Chapman or the Herndon dorms could really use some renovations to match the rest of campus.”

Reed is confident that Trinity will evolve to meet the needs of its students. “I think we have to be optimistic, because we have a really good architectural team here at Trinity, and a really well-informed architectural group that we work with,” he said. “I don’t think it's going to change everything overnight, but we’re hoping to make this a better university in terms of accessibility. It’s not going to be perfect, perhaps, but we’re working to make it better.”