Full ADA Compliance Still Elusive

On his first day at Harvard, William J. Booker '01 couldn't get into Annenberg Hall.

Booker, who has been using a wheelchair all his life, could not use the elevator designed to make the first-year dining hall accessible to students with mobility impairment. Due to an administrative oversight, his ID card hadn't been programmed into system.

"I was so intimidated and didn't want to [be] a pest," Booker says.

So he resigned himself to eating chocolate bars for over a week, until his proctor finally confronted him about his absence from Annenberg and helped rectify the problem.

Although Booker calls Harvard and its accommodations for disabled students a "land of milk and honey" compared to his hometown in rural Virginia, 10 years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Harvard--like other public venues across the country--is still struggling to make buildings accessible to all its students.

The law's strict demands are often difficult to meet when operating with tight spaces, tight budgets, and, in the case of America's oldest university, 363 years of architectural history.

As a result, although most of Harvard's buildings are partially accessible, few are 100 percent open to people with mobility impairments--a problem which University officials say they would love to rectify, in theory, were it not so difficult to do in reality.

"It's a reality of coming to Harvard and one that people need to think about when deciding to come here," says Dean of Freshmen Elizabeth Studley Nathans. "It's not ideal."

Up to Code

Still, accommodations for people with mobility impairments have gotten a boost in the past two years with the renovation of Boylston and Harvard Halls.

Whenever Harvard engages in any large-scale renovation project or builds a new building such as Maxwell Dworkin, the University must comply directly with disability access standards set by the Massachusetts Architectural Access Board (MAAB).

MAAB standards are similar to those set by the federal ADA--an anti-discrimination statute that set sweeping requirements for accessibility in all public locations throughout the country, including private universities.

But while MAAB must be met only when a building is renovated, all buildings must meet ADA code, regardless of whether they have been renovated since the bill's passage.

After years of renovations, most classroom spaces are now accessible in some form to disabled students, but many of the Houses and first-year dorms have much more limited degrees of access.

Harvard has not been forced to meet these standards since ADA is not a building code--it is a standard enforceable only through the courts, and Harvard has never been the subject of an ADA lawsuit.

"There aren't any ADA police out there," says David A. Zewinski '76, associate dean for physical resources and planning. "The only police mechanism is MAAB, and if you don't satisfy them you don't get your building permit."

"It was only due to the goodwill of people who didn't complain that you weren't in court," Zewinski adds.

Buildings such as the soon-to-be renovated University Hall, which is currently inaccessible to mobility-impaired students, or buildings which require disabled individuals to use separate entrances--are places where Harvard could be vulnerable to a lawsuit.

"They could come in and say, 'There's a disabled student that can't get into see the dean of the College or the dean of the Faculty; you're a defendant in a lawsuit," Zewinski says.

Since MAAB code is not a duplicate of the ADA, Harvard could even be the subject of a lawsuit where it has complied with MAAB regulations according to Zewinski, though he doubts such a lawsuit would be likely.

Doing What They Can

But since the passage of ADA, the College has never been the subject of a legal complaint.

Administrators believe they have been spared because while full-scale renovations of major buildings is implausible, they are vigilant about making accommodations whenever necessary.

"What I think we do very well is, if we can't give a person exactly what they're asking for, [we say] 'What can we do?'" says Marie A. Trottier, the University disabilities coordinator. "We try not to say no."

These special arrangements can range anywhere from moving classes to more accessible locations to installing new lifts and ramps.

The College provides services for students with disabilities through the Student Disability Resource Center (SDRC), where Booker says he turns whenever a problem arises.

During shopping period this fall, for example, Booker says he discovered that the sole elevator in Sever Hall was temporarily out of order for inspection--a problem that would have prevented him from shopping a class. So Booker called the SDRC.

"Within two minutes, the guy on top of the elevator received a radio call and climbed down and said 'You need a lift?'" Booker says.

This philosophy also applies to visitors--for whom Harvard must also be accessible.

Dorothy Weiss '01 says while Kirkland House is largely inaccessible on a day-to-day basis, she is always assigned a first floor room so that her father--who uses a wheelchair because of multiple sclerosis--can visit more easily.

The House also erects a temporary ramp when her father comes to visit, according to Weiss, who heads a disability advocacy group on campus called EMPOWER (Encouraging Mankind to Perceive Others with Equal Respect)

"They definitely make an effort," she says.

The Alternative

Harvard needs to make special individual accommodations because the alternative--renovating all buildings to make them comply with ADA--would be completely unrealistic.

"If we were to devote the resources to make all our buildings compliant as soon as possible, we would have to freeze everything else," Zewinski says. "It's obviously a huge amount of money to make Harvard ADA -compliant."

At present, the University spends sums "in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year" making existing facilities more accessible to disabled individuals, estimates Michael N. Lichten, director of the office of physical resources for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Installing a new elevator can cost between $140,000 and $300,000, a lift costs around $30,000 and a ramp can run anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000.

The costs are so significant that Zewinski estimates about 10 percent of the total budget on any construction job goes to making the building handicapped-accessible.

MAAB does sometimes give exemptions to accessibility requirements if meeting the code would impose an undue financial burden. But with an endowment that exceeds $13 billion, state and federal authorities aren't particularly sympathetic to Harvard's cries of poverty.

"It's very hard for Harvard to use that argument," says Elizabeth L. Randall, FAS' capital projects manager.

Randall--who now heads the University Hall renovation project--says the other major challenge facing Harvard is bringing buildings into compliance while maintaining their historical integrity.

Several of Harvard's historical landmarks and cannot be changed without approval from the Cambridge Historic Commission. All Yard buildings except for the relatively new Canaday Hall, for example, are protected.

Among other things, ADA and MAAB codes dictate that doors must be wide enough for wheelchairs, in addition to detailing things like the height of bathroom urinals and the positioning of hand railings. They also mandate that people with disabilities be able to use the primary entrance to a building and be able to access all its floors.

But concerns for preserving the historical value of certain buildings have made these changes impossible in some cases.

When the University made Harvard Hall accessible this summer, it applied for a variance to the primary entrance rule and asked to make the back entrance accessible rather than the front one.

"To put a ramp onto that building, it would have started somewhere down on Mass. [Avenue]," Zewinski says.

Similarly, the University will seek a variance from the MAAB for its renovation of University Hall this summer. Making the building's elevator reach the top floor would require cutting through the historic Faculty meeting room and breaking the original roof line--a move the Cambridge Historical Commission strongly opposes.

Creative Compromises

Unlike the last major renovation of the House system, renovation of the first-year dorms began after ADA had been passed--and the Yard solution is a prime example of how FAS must compromise competing concerns of cost, students' needs and historic preservation.

"It's a huge issue in terms of balancing historic buildings...with the needs of students who deserve and earn a chance to be here," says Dean of Freshmen Nathans, who was thrown into the renovation project as soon as she arrived at Harvard in the early 1990s, just as construction was about to get underway.

Harvard put off renovating the Yard dorms, since it would have been too expensive and time consuming to make each one ADA- compliant.

Instead, the College developed a solution that Nathans calls "brilliant"--it asked the MAAB to consider the dorms as several clusters of buildings which all served the same function.

So long as at least one dorm within each of the clusters was accessible, Harvard proposed, then the needs of disabled students were being adequately served. Thayer, Weld, and Greenough would be made accessible to students, while some other dorms--such as Grays, Hollis, and Mass. Hall--would remain totally inaccessible.

"That was a very important step in allowing us to renovate the freshman dorms," Randall says. "Without it, they couldn't have done it."

In Thayer, the College took down three major structural walls that had divided the building into entryways. Adding an elevator, instituting hallways and configuring some suites for disabled students created a fully accessible living space.

Harvard took similar steps in Weld, virtually gutting the building and starting over.

But when it came to places like Grays or Wigglesworth, the College made only minor changes, leaving the buildings essentially inaccessible to students in wheelchairs.

The College admits this solution is not perfect. First-years with mobility impairments who can access their own rooms cannot necessarily visit their friends. And the accessible dorms have their limitations. Despite its overall accessibility, Thayer, for example, lacks a common room.

Nathans says the FDO also faces difficulty when trying to accommodate first-years who want to be part of roommate suites.

One solution is to place disabled students in Canaday, where at least one such suite is accessible.

But Booker, who was in a Canaday suite, says his placement while convenient, was socially isolating.

"The rest of the entryway was up a set of steps...which meant that I could never meet anyone in my entryway," Booker says. "We were located in a room everyone thought was a supply closet."

In fact, a number of buildings at Harvard are accessible in some sense but not fully accessible in practice.

The FDO itself, for example, is technically accessible. But to get in, Nathans says, students must navigate a tricky ramp and then, once inside have access only to the rooms on the first floor.

Nathans says she is always willing to vacate her first-floor office so disabled students can meet with their assistant dean but acknowledges the situation is not ideal.

Even when buildings are in full compliance with MAAB code, the buildings are not necessarily accessible to all disabled students.

MAAB and ADA code is designed for people in manual wheelchairs with full upper-body strength. But some disabled people use higher-tech, heavier wheelchairs which are electronically controlled or have additional health-related equipment built in.

As a result, FAS has replaced lifts and ramps which do meet MAAB code because--though technically appropriate--these accommodations simply did not meet the needs of the students using them.

This is a particular concern for the Houses--none of which are as accessible as Thayer and Weld, but many of which are partially accessible.

"Adams is accessible to the extent that someone can live in C entryway," says Robert L. Mortimer, associate director for building services in the office of physical resources. "If someone wanted to live in Russell [one Adams building] but wanted to visit someone in Randolph or Westmorly, that would be a challenge."

And even though Adams House is not protected as a historical landmark, Mortimer says any change requires tough choices.

FAS feels bound to develop aesthetically pleasing and technically solid solutions.

"We could nail some two-by-sixes together, paint it gray, and slap it up against the stairs," Mortimer says. "But we're not going to do that."

Instead, Mortimer asks himself what he considers tough questions.

"You have to say to yourself, 'What piece of architecture would I like to remove from Adams House forever and ever?'" he adds.

Making Concessions

Nowadays, Randall says, advocates for the disabled are increasingly willing to make concessions, given the sacrifices required in meeting every letter of disabilities codes.

"Especially at the beginning of the disabled movement, everybody was like, 'No, it's got to be this way, because we've suffered for so long,'" she said.

But Booker, like a growing number of advocates for the disabled, says he understands the challenges Harvard faces and is satisfied that it is making efforts to improve.

"There is no Ivy League school that is able to accommodate [everyone]," he says. "I understand the administration's difficulty in dealing with a very old campus."

Indeed, Booker says he is less concerned about troubles with physical resources than with the lack of awareness of disabilities on campus and with the difficulties disabled students face when they try to get off campus.

"They're minor problems," Booker says of the challenges he faces. "They're small things that you just have to deal with."