VOLUME 104, ISSUE NO. 13 | STUDENT-RUN SINCE 1916 | RICETHRESHER.ORG | WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2019
ILLUSTRATION
BY yifei zhan g
Invisible burdens: students talk accessibility challenges RISHAB RAMAPRIYAN & AJAY KUMAR NEWS EDITOR & FOR THE THRESHER
Each semester a Rice student will spend hours carefully crafting a course schedule that fills their major requirements, impresses future employers and avoids that dreaded 8 a.m. section. But students with disabilities often have to worry about another factor: accessing their classrooms. A pending case against Rice by the Department of Education for disability discrimination motivated a deeper investigation into the experience of students with disabilities on campus.
ACADEMIC EXPERIENCES
Shane DiGiovanna, a Martel College junior, said he had to change his major from physics to economics due to the inaccessibility of the second-floor Herzstein Hall physics labs. “I had to change my entire major due to severe accessibility issues,” DiGiovanna,
co-chair of the Student Association’s Students with Disabilities Council, said.
I had to change my entire major due to severe accessibility issues... That unfortunately drastically changed the direction of my life. Shane DiGiovanna MARTEL COLLEGE JUNIOR “That unfortunately drastically changed the direction of my life, because I was planning on being an aerospace engineer working in the space industry at NASA, JPL, SpaceX ...
That was my whole life plan ever since I was a child.” Alan Russell, director of the Disability Resource Center, said that Herzstein Hall has several complications in terms of accessibility, but they are working to improve those issues. “This office worked with [Facilities Engineering and Planning] to improve access into the building, which resulted in a ramped entrance instead of the old mechanical platform lift,” Russell said. DiGiovanna said the lack of proper infrastructure was the sole reason he had to change his major. “Twenty-nine years after the Americans with Disability Act was passed, students still have to factor in their disability when choosing what to major in, which I believe is not good and kind of unacceptable,” DiGiovanna said. However, DiGiovanna said he does not blame the physics department.
“It was 100 percent not their fault,” DiGiovanna said. “It was just the infrastructure that was the issue [which] couldn’t be fixed by them. And honestly, they were some of the best professors I’ve had at Rice.” Vidisha Ganesh, a Baker College junior, found herself in a similar situation during her first semester at Rice when she took differential equations in Herzstein Hall. “The stairs leading to the second floor of Herzstein are treacherous on their own, but with my additional lack of balancing abilities, I felt endangered every time I had to go up or down,” Ganesh said. “It got to the point where I literally asked the professor to accompany me down the stairs every day after class.” Felix Wu, a graduate student, also experienced poor accessibility during his time at Rice as an undergraduate. “Once when I was going to class, I couldn’t physically get in the building because the SEE ACCESSIBILITY PAGE 7
NEWS
More than 2,000 signatures demand Entrance 23 crosswalk NICOLE LHUILLIER FOR THE THRESHER
A student’s petition for a crosswalk near the university’s entrance 23 on Rice Boulevard has gained more than 2,000 signatures — 2,052 at the time of print. Posted on change.org on November 11, the petition is addressed to the city council, the city of Houston and the administration, faculty, parents and
students of Rice University. However, the potential crosswalk does not fall under the authority of Rice, Richard Johnson, Rice professor and chair of the Rice Mobility Safety Committee, said. “Rice Boulevard is a city street, so any decision about installing a crosswalk would have to come from the City of Houston,” Johnson said. “Rice University cannot make physical changes to Rice Boulevard.” Director of University Affairs Greg
Marshall said he discovered the petition as a post in a Rice alumni group on Facebook. He said the administration believes a roundabout, rather than a crossing, would provide the ideal situation for pedestrians and bikers on Rice Boulevard According to Marshall, a traffic signal on the Rice-Sunset [Boulevard] intersection would be ineffective due to the intersection’s triangular configuration.
“We have been told that the city now feels they can only build the roundabout at the corner of Sunset and Rice Boulevard (which they themselves originally proposed) if the church is willing to donate this property rather than having the city pay to acquire it as it would for any other city construction project that involves private land,” Marshall said. As an alternative to the roundabout, a SEE CROSSWALK PAGE 3