TRANSCRIPT:
The University of Michigan admits thousands of students every year, and as most schools, needs housing to accommodate them. Mason Hall, first built in 1841, was the first University building devoted to instruction and also served as the students dormitory. Since then, many more dormitories have been built, renovated, and updated. With an almost 200 year history, ideas about access have changed tremendously at the University of Michigan, with the Americans with Disabilities Act that would require newly built buildings to be accessible only passing in 1990 (and going into effect in 1992). The University of Michigan has a goal of being accessible to all students now that it is an issue in many students minds. But even with access laws, that doesn’t necessarily mean that all dorms on campus are accessible, especially for the communities that need those accessible spaces. So how accessible are Michigan’s dorms? Are students satisfied? Are they widely used?
I searched the internet to find out. I visited University of Michigan centric forums, mostly the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor subreddits, and documented various users’ experiences on living in the dorms with access needs. Usernames will be anonymized here. Reddit was chosen because it is an easy forum for people to post on and is a well known site, leading many to post on it.
Almost all of University of Michigan’s dorms have been renovated since the ADA went into effect, and almost all of these include accessibility improvements. Since many of the dorms are over fifty years old, it is not a surprise that those renovations, among others, would be needed. Some started as women only dorms and are now open to all genders, like Stockwell Hall for example, and some got their dormitory features removed, like Mason Hall. The way dorms were imagined to be used has changed greatly since the University opened. So did those renovations help?
On Reddit, in response to one person asking about wheelchair accessibility, a wheelchair-using student wrote about their experience on campus and in the dorms. On campus, all the classes and buildings they had visited were wheelchair accessible, though some could be a little tight to navigate. For the dorms, there are special accessible dorms that are larger than normal rooms and have an attached wheelchair accessible bathroom. But the Bursley and Baits dorms are ones to avoid in their opinion, since the accessible entrances and dining hall elevators are hard to find.
As a student on campus, I would agree this lines up with my experience as well. There are wheelchair friendly dorm rooms that I knew about, which I think is great. But having lived in Bursley, I knew that the dorm could be quite inaccessible as well. While I lived there, I had a surgery and was unable to walk up stairs during my recovery. But even after being told where the elevator to the dining hall was, I still couldn’t find it and gave up and forced myself up the stairs. I think it’s a definite issue that the accessible elevator is very inconvenient and hard to locate, especially given that not every student can just go up the stairs if they can’t find it. But I am also glad this user found many other dorms that were accessible to them.
However, not all dorm experiences are positive. One commentator reported that their friend who uses a wheelchair lives in Munger, which is the best they have found but still has issues. There also aren’t many off campus options, since a lot of buildings that say they are ADA compliant are not, another commentator said. With the age of Ann Arbor, it is not hard to believe that many landlords would have trouble renovating their buildings to be ADA compliant, especially since many buildings are so small and hard to renovate.
Other disabilities besides mobility issues are negatively impacted by the dorms. One poster reported that their dorm – East Quad – was always too hot and was making their chronic illness and pain flare up. Fans and opening their windows in the middle of winter wasn’t enough to cool the room down. They also said they had gotten approved for first floor housing because of their disability, but ended up getting put on the second floor, with no response from general housing when asking about it. Unfortunately, there was no update on whether the poster got accommodating housing or not after the post. But the fact to me that this poster didn’t get their accommodatex housing even after getting approved for it, and being told there was nothing they could do about it, is an extremely egregious case to me.
In general, it seems that University housing is a better option than off campus housing for those with disabilities and access needs, but still, many problems have arisen. Many reported positive experiences with the University Health Service and Services for Students with Disabilities, but those places unfortunately couldn’t help on campus living issues. Even with self-advocacy, some students still had issues. But there were also a few notable positive experiences of being able to get wheelchair friendly housing and most dorms being wheelchair accessible, besides Bursley and Baits. I think University Housing is headed in the right direction, but needs notable improvements.
For example, I believe that University Housing either needs to be better trained regarding student disabilities or expanded so that they have the resources to adequately address access needs among students. Cases where a student gets approved for accommodated housing but doesn’t receive it should never happen. I also believe that even with the accessibility improvements that have been made, there should still be more done. It’s never going to be perfect, but some dorms like Bursley and Baits still are not very wheelchair friendly, and even dorms that are could still be better. This is especially needed since off campus housing can be notably inaccessible.
To conclude, I believe that the University is trying to take disability and access needs seriously, but still needs work to properly accommodate more students. It’s an amazing improvement that wheelchair accessible dorms are available, but many other needs are not properly addressed yet. Hopefully, those issues will be addressed in the future.
Thank you for listening.
