Iowa’s Old Capitol, with its gilded dome, sticks out among the buildings on the University of Iowa Pentacrest. However, they all hold history — especially Macbride Hall.

Home to the Natural History Museum of Iowa, Macbride is filled with artifacts, excelling in telling stories that have long since ended. However, the building and its content have some downsides.

Kristian Marchand navigates Macbride weekly. The trek begins by entering through a door concealed in the building’s landscape. 

The journey continues with a ride to the first floor of Macbride. Using an elevator that screeches the entire way up, Marchand exits only to be met with heavy, old wooden doors leading into history — where a push-to-open button remains unusable.

Rolling through Macbride’s museum, Marchand is followed by taxidermied eyes as they continue on the path ahead.

Passing Rusty the Giant Sloth, Marchand gives the once-thriving creature a nod while their wheelchair slides against the carpet. The brownish-red animal looms over Marchand with pitch-black eyes, feeling almost too large for the space allotted to him.

Marchand continues on. The chirping of the robotic birds greets them as they wheel further into the museum.

Finally, reaching another set of doors — just as heavy as the last — Marchand pauses, garners one last burst of energy, and opens the doors to our century.

All of this? The journey it takes for Marchand to get to their Thursday class. 

Accessibility on college campuses

Nationwide, college campuses find themselves struggling with accessibility for campus buildings. Sometimes, a building’s compliance can often be expensive and taxing, especially in cases where old buildings need modifications, like in the UI’s case, where a majority of the buildings were made before the American Disability Act’s passing in 1990.

 Richard Sternadori, a senior program director at Great Plains ADA Center and professor of architecture at the University of Missouri, said accessibility compliance is a two-part system.

“We’ve got this bifurcated system. We’ve got the International Code Council, who write the building codes that would then be adopted by your local government,” he said. “[There is also] the ADA, and the ADA is reliant on a book called the ‘2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design.’”

Sternadori said buildings made before 1990 are allowed to remain as is 99 percent of the time, but there are a few stipulations. He said buildings are allowed to remain as is until the facility is altered or updated.

Macbride was built in 1908. 

Navigating campus

Marchand, a first-year student at the UI, struggled to find their class in Macbride on the first day of school. They enlisted the help of nearby students, only to discover the single route to the north side of the building was through Macbride’s Natural History Museum.

 While able-bodied students can just go around the building to reach those classrooms on the first floor, or initially enter on the north side, Marchand is left going through the museum because of the location of the building’s single elevator.

 Another concern of Marchand’s is the museum is closed to the general public on Mondays and Tuesdays. On those days, the other side of the building on the first floor appears to be inaccessible to those who rely on the elevator.

 “What strikes me about Macbride is their very obvious disregard for the ADA requirements,” Marchand said. “Just the fact that if my class were on a different day, just by chance, then I would not be able to attend class; it’s callous.”

 After this experience, Marchand began a petition in early October, which has 346 signatures as of Nov. 5, to make Macbride more accessible for students and add an elevator to the north side of the building.

 When asked about Macbride’s accessibility and the petition, Tiffini Stevenson Earl, the university’s ADA coordinator wrote in an email to The Daily Iowan, the petition had some inaccuracies, and the issue of accessibility through the museum gallery is unique to the first floor.

 “Access to the north side of the building from the elevator is possible via an open, connected ground floor level or the accessible pathway through Macbride Auditorium on the second and third floors,” she wrote. “The issue of accessibility via the museum gallery is unique to the first floor, where the museum regularly opens for access upon arrangement/request outside of normal hours.” 

Earl also wrote that Student Disability Services often works with the museum staff to allow access through the first-floor gallery in Iowa Hall upon special arrangement outside of typical museum hours. Earl wrote this could happen officially with classroom scheduling, if necessary.

 According to the university, the museum hours for UI faculty, staff, and students are:

• Monday-Thursday, 7 a.m.-10 p.m.
• Friday and Saturday, 7 a.m.-6 p.m.

For the public, the hours are:

• Wednesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Even though Marchand is pursuing a petition for Macbride Hall specifically, they have experienced barriers all over campus.

 Marchand lives in Catlett Residence Hall. One of the two elevators reaching the dormitories had been out of commission for two weeks in mid-October.

 “Class is hard enough to get to, but being down one elevator makes it that much harder,” Marchand said.

 Elizabeth Fuentes, a UI undergraduate who lives off-campus, has only recently become a wheelchair and rollator walker user after a chronic illness worsened.

 Her college experience has been somewhat tumultuous, as her diagnosis of a chronic illness impacted her ability to attend classes. She has reenrolled after a few semesters off. She and her husband live in Cedar Rapids.

 Fuentes is only on campus on Tuesdays and Thursdays this semester for her class in the English-Philosophy Building.

 “The EPB is notoriously difficult,” she said. “It’s never created a situation where I am stuck, trapped, or unable to get somewhere, but it’s created situations where I’m going to be a little late.”

 The EPB was built in 1966 and made to be riot-proof.

 A couple of moments that came to mind for Fuentes when she had problems included when the wheelchair lift to the basement of the EPB was out of order.

 The lift itself is slightly daunting and moves up and down at a concerningly slow pace, but that was the first time it had been completely out of commission since she started using it.

 When an elevator or lift is no longer working in buildings with their classes, both Fuentes and Marchand never receive any notification from the university. They both discover the issues when actively trying to get to class.

Getting to campus

The UI prides itself on being a walkable campus; however, when walking is no longer an option, getting to campus and around campus in a timely manner can pose an issue.

 One resource the UI created to curb some accessibility concerns is known as the Bionic Bus. The paratransit service, run through the CAMBUS office, offers an on-demand and door-to-door transportation option for people with disabilities — both temporary or permanent — according to the CAMBUS website.

 The riders have to apply for certification through the university by submitting medical notes and requests to the coordinator to use the resource.

 Marchand said while useful in some cases, the service is often hit-or-miss.

 Fuentes sometimes uses the Bionic Bus to get to campus when she can’t get a ride from family or friends, and she wants to avoid parking fees. She said she is fortunate enough that, most of the time, her husband drives her.

 However, to use the resource, she has to drive into Iowa City and park at a friend’s house so the bus can pick her up. Both CAMBUS and Iowa City transit are wheelchair accessible, but Fuentes said the “fiasco” isn’t always worth it.

 “It can be really difficult sometimes to watch a bus driver tell [students] they have to move to put a wheelchair on the bus,”
Fuentes said.

Campus complaints 

The Office of Civil Rights Compliance in the Division of Access, Opportunity, and Diversity handles the majority of complaints surrounding the ADA on campus.

 Earl explained in an email to the DI how a complaint or concern is handled.

 “When our office receives a reported concern, our first step is to provide outreach to the impacted individual and offer them an opportunity to share their concern[s] and hear about resolution options,” Earl wrote.

 She further explained that she works with facility management to address concerns if she is made aware of a building being inaccessible to students and urged students to report any barriers or accessibility issues on campus to her.

 Marchand has some reservations when it comes to complaints, as individuals have spoken to them about the lack of action surrounding complaints in buildings, including Macbride.

 Marchand hopes to spur the addition of another elevator in Macbride with their petition. They want to make campus accessible for all, so if petitioning changes things, Marchand said they will petition as much as necessary.

 “I won’t stop,” Marchand said. “I won’t.”