Hannah Soyer
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On Jan. 14, a much-needed move will take place for one of the campus organizations — the Women’s Resource and Action Center will be officially open for business at its new location, the Bowman House, which is across the street from Burge. WRAC will move from the “blue house” at the bottom of Market Street.Why is this change too long in coming? Because the “blue house,” though perhaps nostalgic, wasn’t wheelchair accessible up until sometime last year, when I raised this concern to them, and a small ramp was placed over the step in the front door. Still, once inside, my use of the building was pretty limited, because of the tight spaces and narrow doorways.
The Bowman House is a large improvement over the “blue house,” evidenced by the fact that its front entrance has been made wheelchair-accessible. On top of this, the new WRAC will now include two wheelchair accessible and gender-neutral bathrooms and have an accessible kitchenette and water fountains at different heights. The largest room, which will be used for the majority of the programming, is on the first floor, along with Director Linda Kroon’s office. This is nice, because the Bowman House has no elevator.
For me, this is upsetting, because it means that the new location of the WRAC still will not be fully handicap accessible. Tom Rocklin, the UI vice president for Student Life, said the reason for not including the installation of an elevator in the Bowman House renovations ultimately came down to cost. To install an elevator would have been an extra $300,000, approximately a 40 percent increase in the “already substantial” budget. I understand that this is a lot of money, and I understand that there are not unlimited funds to go around. Still, this is disappointing.
WRAC isn’t just some trivial or niche organization, and by not having this potentially needed resource fully accessible to all students, the University of Iowa is subtly contributing to the pervasive yet covert mindset that certain things — certain places — should not be accessible to all people.
No, it’s not a conscious act; no one (hopefully) is saying, “Let’s actually make this space inaccessible to a select portion of the population.” It’s more just people seeing something not being accessible and thinking “Well, that really sucks, but there’s not much we can do about it.” Most likely, most people don’t take the time to try to change this because it doesn’t directly affect them. But just because something doesn’t directly affect us doesn’t mean we should ignore a problem.
Kroon has said any events that cannot take place on the first level on Bowman House will be scheduled elsewhere in a place that is also accessible. But this shouldn’t have to happen. “I am personally committed to continuing to seek opportunities to retro-fit Bowman House with an elevator,” Kroon said, “and to identifying funding sources to do so, as I strongly believe that the lack of an elevator is unsatisfactory.” I am grateful for this, as I believe it to be unsatisfactory as well.