MHCC CAMPUS: LIMITED WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBILITY

Martell Meacham The Advocate

On Tuesday, Nov. 22 – just last week – I was in class in the Integrated Media department late at night with a number of classmates. At around 9 p.m. the emergency alarms began going off. Somewhere on campus someone had pulled one of the alarms, which meant that all of us had to evacuate.

The evacuation point for much of the MHCC campus is large patch of grass, near Northeast Kane Drive, in front of a number of flagpoles. Integrated Media is on the campus’s first (or lower) floor, accessible from that area via a number of stairs, as well as three elevators.

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News Editor variety of astronomy subjects which were changed every month with a very reasonable $5 admission fee, making it a fantastic resource for anyone: from those with a passing interest in astronomy, to serious astronomy buffs. On top of this, the planetarium was available to rent for school groups and is located in a very opportune location for schools in the Gresham/Troutdale area and beyond, making it a valuable resource for educators as well.

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The Planetarium was closed in March 2020 along with the rest of the MHCC campus, and has remained closed for a variety of reasons of the last few years. The inside is effectively large theater; there are a number of seats lined up similarly to a movie theater and everything was projected onto the domed ceiling. This complicated social distancing, coupled with the maximum capacity of 70 people made it difficult to justify opening. Additionally, the Planetarium was largely operated by one person: Pat Hanrahan, who is considering retirement. As of right now the only updates of note are that the Planetarium’s fate will be further discussed at some point in 2023 and that Pat is considering staying on as the Planetarium Director, however in a more limited capacity compared to previous years. Hopefully, it will reopen within the coming year as it’s a fantastic resource for the local community.

As it happens, one of my classmates uses a wheelchair. Normally they take one of the elevators from the second level down to the first in order to attend class. The problem here was that all of the elevators are shut down in case of an emergency, and the most direct ways to reach the evacuation site are via sets of stairs – none of which have a wheelchair ramp in sight.

In fact, there are only two wheelchair-accessible methods of going from the first level of the campus to the second, aside from the elevators: Both require traveling to the far ends (north and south) of the campus Academic Center where the sidewalk is sloped uphill to a degree that does not comply with ADA standards, and then looping back around to the flagpoles.

To make matters worse, the evacuation route from our location required us to travel through the section of the campus where the alarm had been pulled – meaning that in order to evacuate, my classmate was required to put themself in danger because they had no other options.

This is a serious problem that has a couple of solutions. The first and easiest would be to designate the parking lots at either end of the Academic Center as additional evacuation points. The other is for MHCC to install proper ramps around campus, which would additionally provide further accessibility for mobility impaired individuals outside of emergency situations.

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