12 Rules Don’t Apply: Stairs and the Myth of Meritocracy Inspired by “stair”
When you look at landmarks and buildings, and you see the stairs, do you ever wonder what’s missing? Is there anything missing at all? What could possibly be missing from the picturesque view of the Supreme Court? The Lincoln Memorial? Kuruvungna (formerly Janss) Steps at UCLA? The Great Wall of China? These works of art have aesthetic value but are first and foremost a practical device: stairs are meant to connect two levels of different heights. Stairs are seemingly made to connect. They’re for everyone! Allegedly. But for whom is this connection actually a connection? Stairs, while a seeming minor obstacle to scale hills or reach statues, at the end of the day, is a marker of levels. It is a marker of hierarchy. It is a marker of who can use it and who cannot. For people with disabilities (especially physical or mobility disabilities), stairs are often not as much a marker of connection but a marker of, at best, inconvenience, but mostly inaccessibility and separation. Othering. For some, there might as well be a wall. Is there a way someone with a physical disability could make it up stairs? Yes, technically, whether it be someone literally carrying them up, or them working significantly harder than able- bodied people to push past the pain or the ways their bodies cannot move. Are many places “wheelchair accessible” on a technicality? Yes. But at what cost? Take UCLA for example. To the best of my knowledge, if someone in a wheelchair wants to get to the top of Kuruvungna Steps, the only option available to them besides getting into a car and parking at a different parking lot is to go all the way to the business school (Anderson) and take an elevator there (that was only installed within the last couple years, I may add!). There are options to go through the convoluted Chutes and Ladders situation that connects Bruin Walk and Powell Library, but on a realistic note (as well as a humanizing one) how fair or equitable is that commute? Students (and people in general) are busy, and while I have not found it the most enjoyable, each time I have had to sprint from my dorm, the parking lot, or a class to another obligation of mine, sprinting up and down stairs expedited the process– it didn’t hinder it. Was I out of breath and unable to pretend to be hot and mysterious as I panted my way through the door of my class? Absolutely. But I wasn’t required to take some convoluted path that made me even later than I was going to be in the first place. In thinking about this, I tried to figure out some novel metaphor- what the equivalent of the Glass Ceiling (or Bamboo Ceiling) was for people with disabilities. What was the metaphorical ceiling made out of? And then I realized that I didn’t need to coin some new term. Stairs were it. The “Ceiling” is not a ceiling whatsoever. It’s literally stairs. When women (or any other marginalized groups) are dealing with invisible ceilings that hinder their growth, they are made to think that they’re doing something wrong. Maybe they’re not working hard enough. Maybe they’re not competent or qualified. But recognition of the Glass Ceiling is recognition of the institutional (or infrastructural) barriers that make it so women and
