Two students initiated a campaign to make Northwestern’s campus more handicap accessible by collecting at least 450 signatures on a petition at Saturday’s football game.
Music seniors Becca Pascal and Heather Doyle, who are spearheading the effort, said they plan to continue collecting signatures until their Wednesday meeting with NU’s Equal Employment Opportunities Director Michael Powell.
Pascal said she has yet to compile a list of campus buildings that aren’t handicap accessible, but cited the Music Administration Building and Fraternity and Sorority Quads as key problems.
“By not having all fraternities and sororities accessible, it goes against their word of having all activities and academic endeavors open to all students,” Pascal said.
Pascal and Doyle also have met with Patrick Hughes and Hollister Bundy of Inclusion Solutions, a Chicago consulting firm that helps businesses reach compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Hughes, the chief executive, also founded Natural Ties, an Evanston-based non-profit organization dedicated to helping people with disabilities become active in their communities.
Pascal said Hughes offered to assess the cost of upgrading sorority houses for $2,000 per house. He also offered to do a legal assessment to determine how NU stacks up with the Americans with Disabilities Act, she said.
Other universities have lost lawsuits over handicap accessibility in the past. Last year, Duke University settled a disability-rights complaint with the U.S. Justice Department, agreeing to make its campus more handicap accessible over the next five years. In 1990, Washington University in St. Louis agreed to spend $2.5 million to modify campus buildings to settle a lawsuit filed by a student who claimed the campus was inaccessible.
Both Pascal and Doyle said they hope the situation can be resolved without going to court, but said legal action would be a last resort.
“We don’t want to have to go to court,” Doyle said. “(But) if they say no, what happened to Duke would happen to Northwestern.”
Pascal said she hopes the process starts before she graduates in June, but she plans on pursuing this after graduating if necessary.
“I’ll work on this as long as it takes, because something needs to change,” she said.
Pascal said she spends about four hours a day making phone calls, interviewing students, handing out petitions and photographing buildings on campus that aren’t handicap accessible.
Pascal and Doyle started the campaign about two weeks ago, but they’ve been thinking of doing it since their freshman year. Both students have disabled people in their family. Pascal’s mother has polio and several of Doyle’s siblings have disabilities, including a younger brother with cerebral palsy. Doyle also tutored a wheelchair-bound 14-year-old violinist who had difficulty getting to different areas in MAB.
Pascal said her mother, who lives in Winnetka, has trouble visiting her third-floor room in the Alpha Chi Omega sorority house, as well as her performances in MAB.
“Stairs are difficult for her, and they’re impossible when it’s icy,” Pascal said. “If my mom wants to come see me in a class, they’re not going to move class for her, and if my class is on fourth floor of MAB, then that’s a problem.”
