Alumni coalition urges for more accessibility
By Deanna Durben ’25, News Editor
The newly formed Hamilton Alumni Student Coalition (HASC) published a list of accessibility demands on Monday, Oct. 24, in collaboration with the Disabled Students’ Network (DSN). These include quick fixes (maintenance of curb cuts, installing a Martin’s Way railing, unlocking the KJ-McEwen door, and an ADA barrier reporting form), hiring an ADA coordinator within the 2023 fiscal year, and asking the College to publicly publish a plan for how they will become more physically accessible in the next five to years.
HASC was founded by Charlie Guterman ’22. As she was bombarded by fundraising emails from Hamilton after her graduation, she began considering what her role as an alumna should be. Thinking back to her involvement with student activism in college, “having an alumni block that could stand in solidarity could be really powerful,” she realized.
HASC asks alumni to leverage their wealth and influence to withhold donations, not attending any pay-to-enter, events or volunteering at events until demands are met. “The administration cares most about their bottom line,” Guterman says, “and there would be power in alumni withholding from that.”
Guterman was involved in the DSN when her friend Ele Sorensen ’23 founded it in Fall 2021. The accessibility audit of buildings around campus that the DSN conducted last year highlighted how many of the buildings have features that are not actually ADA compliant, especially problems with the push button doors, while recent articles and discussions with administration have further highlighted Hamilton’s inaccessibility. After coming up with the initial idea for HASC, Guterman reached out to Sorensen with some ideas for HASC to tackle, and they began collaborating.
The quick fixes are “achievable, meaningful, and relatively inexpensive demands” that would have large impacts. Firstly, having proper maintenance of curb cuts, sidewalks and ramps and ensuring that the lip of the sidewalk or ramp is level with the street determines whether students using mobility aids can navigate campus.
Secondly, the DSN has long been requesting that a railing be installed on the Martin’s Way bridge, which is steep and treacherous when icy. Facilities recently commented that there are plans to replace the pedestrian bridge on Martin’s Way in a couple of years because it has outlived its usefulness, and that they will address the potholes and height issues for now.
Thirdly, HASC demands that elevator access to McEwen be provided by unlocking the door between KJ and McEwen. The DSN explained that locking the door was a decision made by Bon Appetit, not the College. General Manager Reuben Haag did not open the door, citing concerns that students would enter the dining hall without swiping their HillCards. Haag said that students who were injured or disabled could email to be let into the kitchen elevator. “This plan is totally implausible and unfair…They seem to think this is separate but equal, but disabled students should be able to live with the same ease and spontaneity as anyone else,” Sorensen says.
The Student Assembly minutes from Monday, Oct. 17, included a conversation with Mike Klapmeyer, the Associate Vice President of Facilities. He said that the College hired a local architect in 2019, Chiang O’Brien, to do an audit of almost all facilities at Hamilton to help identify where there are inadequacies. “The architects looked at 52 buildings and identified hundreds of inadequacies totalling $15 million,” Klapmeyer said, and the College has dedicated half a million dollars per year to “begin chipping away at the problem,” starting with making dining halls, FoJo and the Wellin more accessible.
When informed about this, Guterman pointed out that it demonstrates the importance of crafting a public plan that is accessible to all community members, alumni and prospective students on the Hamilton website. Guterman noted that without being on-campus and actually reading the SA minutes, people have no access to this information.
There is no document outlining exactly what the College plans to do. She is glad that the College is taking accessibility seriously, but added that “this shows a lack of transparency that could so easily be rectified. If you have a plan it should be easy to link a PDF, and if you’re not doing that, my question is why?” For prospective students, “being able to see this information is a good indicator of how much a college cares.” Guterman began investigating other NESCACs’ accessibility webpages and policies, and found Hamilton lacking. Sorensen provided their expertise in the process, and commented that “the other schools were much more put together and considerate of disability as diversity and identity-first language.”
They evaluated each school using 10 criteria: whether they have an accessibility committee, center, advisors, maps, a mission statement, physical and digital accessibility info, barrier reporting forms, an action plan, and disability framed as diversity.
According to Guterman and Sorensen, Hamilton met two of the 10 criteria, placing it last in the 11 NESCACs. The tone of the Hamilton accessibility webpage is “vastly different to the other NESCACs,” Guterman points out.
The first sentence you see is “Students seeking special arrangements due to a disability should provide a recent evaluation conducted
by a specialist in the appropriate field,” immediately establishing a clinical tone that could so easily be changed, she points out. Sorensen also remarked that in their own experience “Hamilton’s accommodation process, how it talks about disability, and the lack of available resources” is a big problem.
Other schools start off with welcoming messages emphasizing that disabled students should be able to access everything that able-bodied students can. Guterman points to Middlebury’s accessibility webpage as an example, which provides pages and pages of helpful links, auxiliary aids that can be requested, as well as a list of nearby doctors and psychiatrists who can provide diagnoses.
When the DSN reached out to Dean Harrison to request that a list of possible academic accommodations be published on the website, “he refused,” Sorensen said. Since accommodations are so personalized and the process is “laborious, expensive and often traumatizing,” it’s difficult for students to even know what their options are.
Furthermore, Dean Harrison is the only accessibility staff member on campus, and in fact split his time between accessibility and international students before Fall 2022. Six of the other NESCACs have two or more full time staff members, or even official student coordinators who act as a conduit between faculty and students.
HASC demands that the College invest in access by hiring an ADA Coordinator within the 2023 fiscal year, and draft and release a plan in the 2023 fiscal year outlining how they will become more physically accessible in the next five to ten years. “This plan should include, but not be limited to, larger renovations of inaccessible dorms/academic buildings, clear classroom policy for professors around accommodations, mandatory training on disability for faculty and staff, as well as how the plan is informed by the experience of disabled students at Hamilton. This plan must be published publicly, where both the Hamilton community and prospective Hamilton students can view it.”
Guterman is currently trying to recruit more alumni through Facebook alumni groups, LinkedIn and Instagram. “I’ve been trying to reach more intergenerational alumni from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, who have had time to accumulate wealth and connections with the College that the administration will listen to.”
“As students, we’re here for a very brief amount of time, and the College knows that,” Sorensen points out. “Hamilton cares about the people who give them money: alumni and wealthy parents.” Sorensen implores students to think about what power they can leverage now, or when they graduate, to make the College a better place.
Guterman sees HASC taking on issues other than accessibility in the future, and wants to “be driven by the needs of people on campus” and support student activists’ agendas, not push an external one. “Coalition building is very powerful, and I think that an alumni and student coalition has a lot of potential.”
