The Gatepost Editorial: We need to be proactive about our campus elevators

By The Gatepost Editorial Board 

In the past two months, students, faculty, and staff have received numerous emails alerting them about elevator outages in the McCarthy Center and Foster Hall.

Emails about the McCarthy Center elevator began July 8 and continued steadily through September, with the final alert being sent out Sept. 8. The campus community then began receiving emails on Oct. 1 about the elevator in Foster Hall, where the Counseling and Health and Wellness centers are located. 

The campus community received an update on Oct. 2 that the Foster Hall elevator is only “partially operational,” as the down button on the first floor is not functioning properly. 

There has not been an update that the elevator has been fully restored since Oct. 2.

Students in residence halls such as Miles Bibb and West have also reported the elevators in those buildings being down for extended periods of time since the school year began. 

We have been here before. 

This is the second time The Gatepost Editorial Board has opined about elevator issues in the last seven months. 

These recent elevator breakdowns come after a slew of outages across campus last year in the Henry Whittemore Library, Hemenway Laboratories, Larned Hall, and May Hall, where the elevator was out of service for six months. 

Hundreds of students frequent May Hall on a daily basis and the extended period of time the elevator in the building was out of service was detrimental to the daily lives of students, faculty, and staff. 

Elevators are an essential accommodation for members of the campus community who have a disability, are dealing with an injury, or who have to carry art supplies, projects, or cleaning carts between floors.

An article published inThe Gatepost Feb. 21, “May Hall elevator repair will take months,” noted replacement parts for the elevator were “obsolete” because the elevator had been in service for so long. 

Campus administrators told The Gatepost that both the May Hall elevator and the Henry Whittemore Library elevator were beyond or near the end of their working life.

If it is a normal practice to repeatedly overextend their working lives - why do we continue to let the elevators get to this point of disrepair?

Elevators across campus are far too old and they are used far too frequently for their working lives to simply be extended without proper maintenance in the interim. 

If the University is going to continue to keep using the outdated elevators then more maintenance is imperative. However, instead of continuing to ask how the current elevators can be fixed, when is it time to pivot to asking what the threshold is for getting them replaced?

How can the University be as proactive as possible about this accessibility crisis moving forward?

We deserve honest, transparent communication about what is going on with the elevators and why it continues to happen. 

At President Nancy Niemi’s State of the University address Sept. 29, she referenced the state of the elevators and said there is an accessibility task force aligning with the upcoming campus master plan. 

“If you need one more reason to know why it's important that we're doing this - if I say the word ‘elevator?’ I also lose sleep over that,” Niemi said. 

The Gatepost Editorial Board acknowledges there have been budget cuts across campus and we are aware that simply replacing the elevators may not be a viable financial option. 

It does not feel like too much to ask for working elevators in two of the most important buildings on campus. The McCarthy Center is our student hub. It houses everything from the Dining Commons, to classrooms, to student organizations. These are vital areas students need access to on a daily basis. 

The elevator in Foster Hall brings students up to the Counseling Center, which serves as a vital resource for students. If the elevator falls into further disrepair, some of our students would be cut off from the Counseling Center. 

It is disappointing that the University did not learn their lesson from the six-month outage in May Hall and is continuing to tempt fate with the other elevators on campus. 

If the Foster Hall or McCarthy Center elevators were not operational for an extended period of time, it would be disastrous. 

This is an issue that affects everyone on this campus - you may not know the value of an elevator until you need one.