Taking Steps:

My Wheelchair and I Don't Live on the Same Campus as You Do

by Max Lakso

I stare up from the bottom of the stairs, hungry. It is 10:19 pm, and precious minutes tick away, the only sounds left in my fatigued brain. The dining hall closes at 10:30. My hands grip the wheels of my chair, and I roll back and forth, as if shifting my weight. I am far too tired, and far too calorie-deprived for this puzzle.

I can’t take the wheelchair lift tonight; the doors are locked. I learned that on the way down to retrieve my chair. In a shaky glass box, I’d descended into a tiny, cobwebbed pit surrounded by looming rock walls. I exited, tried the door handle—and the elevator door automatically swung shut behind me. It was just me, a locked door, and my desperate hope that this decrepit box would open again.

It opened. And I ascended, right back where I had started.

I can’t carry my wheelchair up the stairs. Taking the stairs is hard enough on its own; lugging my chair with me would be a struggle on a good day. Today is not a good day.

I could put my wheelchair away and walk the three flights of stairs up to my second-floor dorm room, then collapse into bed for an unsatisfactory dinner of sleep. But my hands shake, and my stomach shudders at the thought of spending twelve more hours empty.

This isn't much of a choice. Putting my wheelchair away and using the last dregs of my energy to wobble over to Anderson is a terrible option, yet the only way forward is on foot. Even when I finally got a mobility aid—after years of medical neglect, immobilizing pain and desperate begging—everything comes back to this: no one cares how much you suffer from this. If you can do it like the rest of us, then you have to do it our way.

Never mind that that philosophy is the only reason my pain became chronic in the first place…

I'm about to slip back into the dreary basement halls when a figure appears at the top of the stairs. Although my face burns, I flag them down. And as I hover around them, pointing out what bits of the chair fold away and which ones are good handles, I am reminded that mobility aids are no match for unfriendly terrain. The burning pain in my feet pales in comparison to the pain of existing on a campus that is not built for me, and the sharp twinges in my spine sting less than the insult of becoming a selling point to the very same institution that physically rejects me.

I’ve heard an awful lot of evasive complaints from staff about how terribly difficult it is for the school to install elevators: how expensive it would be, how old the buildings are. And while I could spend hours directly addressing that problem, (To summarize, Hamline is the oldest college in the state, with one of the highest tuitions and collections of showy architecture. Time and resources are clearly not the issue here.) I feel it’s crucial to note the inextricable role of social and bureaucratic influence in campus (in)accessibility. Which is to say, this is systemic. You can put an elevator in every dorm building, and a ramp at every entrance (and you should!) but at the core of inaccessibility lies the broken, ableist system, and the bureaucrats that have exonerated themselves from taking initiative and fixing it.

“There is no place in Manor Hall for your wheelchair." No follow up, no research, no redirection to an appropriate staff member— no help at all. This same response came from two separate staff members, in two separate conversations. The second even asked me not to call them directly again. They preferred a game of telephone with my RA as the middleman. In fact, they were confident enough in their complacency to chastise me. Apparently, it was irresponsible and risking theft for me to store my wheelchair (bike locked and with no valuables or battery) in a rarely-used lounge off in the corner, despite being denied any other method of storage. It was hard to decide whether the victim-blaming was more or less disrespectful than my first response; the first staffer had simply ended the conversation entirely, as if to suggest I refrain from being disabled so as not to inconvenience the school.

It was a student—a first-year, who doesn’t live in Manor, but who saw me struggling to carry my chair up the front steps—who passed on the tale of a storage room in the basement. The Bike Room. The only reason I am able to store my medical necessity anywhere safe is due to the kindness and chance knowledge of the Bike Room student. The only reason I managed to lug my chair to ground level those first days was because students, friends and strangers alike, stepped up to carry an unwieldy metal object up and down the steps like the world’s strangest new CrossFit craze. I’ve even been carried up the stairs myself, by an acquaintance I’d met less than a month prior; after a long day, my chronic pain is bad enough that I would sacrifice dignity and independence to avoid facing the climb.

This is not an inspiring story of able-bodied saviors. (Though I truly appreciate the support of each of the students described here.)

This is a horror story of crippling neglect that infantilizes me and clips my wings.

Despite the pain and fatigue it causes me, my disability is not the problem that brings me to write this. The problem is the physical and social architecture that is built for Abled People Only. I’ve had people express sympathy towards me for being “confined” to my chair. I’m about as confined to my chair as you are confined to your glasses, your clothes, or your shoes. My chair is a tool. If I don’t use my tool, I will end up confined—to my bed. To you, my chair may appear to be synonymous with injury and suffering. But to me, my chair is a symbol of my freedom, my agency, and my ability for self-care.

In this manner, my stifled agency is misattributed to my disability, rather than being identified as a symptom of the ableist system in which I live. This is partly an innocent misunderstanding of how disabilities and accommodations work. But the reason this misattribution became systemic is because it serves a purpose: to deflect responsibility from those in power.

This misattribution shows itself in many ways. Some are patronizing: I am not allowed out past 8 pm. That’s when they lock the doors leading from the wheelchair lift (semi-affectionately dubbed “the Hellevator” by the author) to the basement. Disabled people don’t get keycard access, unlike the walking entrances to the basement. Other people with keys make our decisions for us. And I won’t be doing any partying (or socializing, or eating at Anderson) anytime past Friday, because the doors are locked all weekend. Disabled people, the system assumes, don’t need social lives. Of course, I technically am not completely unable to go through; I simply must call public safety every time I want out, like I’m a pet scratching at the door.

Painting by Max Lakso

Sometimes, I see the misattribution in compliments: I am mature, strong, a good self-advocate. All traits forcefully awarded to me like a leaden crown. I don’t get the privilege of being rebellious or lazy or delicate or quiet or broken-down. Hell, I don’t even get the privilege of being late! I once skipped a class because I couldn’t get in. The door had neither an automatic opener button nor a doorstop.

My options to get into class were:

A) struggle to open a door while on wheels, with terrible leverage, and disrupt class in the process, or

B) find a random person in the area to walk over to my classroom just to open the door for a grown adult.

Abled kids get the privilege of slipping in late, unnoticed. Abled kids wouldn’t even be so late in the first place! Retrieving my wheelchair from Manor basement, then doing a lap of West Hall looking for the only ramp (passing two staircase entrances on the way) was at least a 30 minute trip. Walking, this journey takes me 3 minutes from dorm to classroom. If this class had been in any other building, I may have been screwed right there, but serendipitously, right down the hall was the disability services office. I rolled over and asked the student worker if they would open the door for me. Then, once I was inside the disability services office, I asked if they would come with me to open the door to my class. But by then, only 15 minutes remained of the 90 minute class. I hesitated—then, abashed, I left for lunch, never having entered the classroom.

Later that day, I received an email. Before informing me of the classroom’s newly-issued doorstop, the email began with a swift shifting of blame. By the second sentence, I was being chastised for “decid[ing] not to go in [to class],” when the student worker had “offered” to let me in… “which is totally your choice.” But what choice was left for me to make?

Truly, I could suffer the indignities of the school’s physical design with some acceptance if only I had the support of a staff that was ready and willing to “do all the good we can.” But the flippant microaggressions that I’ve endured ensure that the school would stay inaccessible no matter how many renovations take place. I believe in the kindness of individuals. I even believe that people will go out of their way to help each other just because it’s right. I believe Hamline’s greatest asset is its students, professors, and all the individual kind souls who believe, as I do, that we have the potential to live up to our motto.

But here’s the terrible irony of writing on inaccessibility: the truer it is, the harder it is to write. While others are able to use their 100ish waking hours per week to their full advantage, I sink countless hours into unheard pleas to administration; hours waiting by the basement doors for some guy with a key ring and a bulletproof vest; hours of slowly hiking the steps to my dorm; hours spent taking the long way around buildings to find a ramp; hours of watching my peers walk past me, chattering merrily amongst themselves, as I wait for the elevator; hours of writing apologetic emails and praying that my professors don’t think I’m just lazy; hours replaying the ableist rants or snide comments of authority figures, and hours sleeping off the flashbacks that the yelling triggered; hours of forms and emails and calls all to get one single key; lonely, shame-drenched hours of invisible obstacles. When am I supposed to write? When do I even have time to try and fix any of this? When will the powerful ones care with their actions, not just their words? When will you break the bureaucratic status quo? How long until you include me in more than your sales pitch, Hamline?

I don’t ask for much. I don’t need construction to begin tonight. I don’t want special treatment, and I don’t want to have to design the improvements myself in order for anything meaningful to get done. All I want is steady progress. All I ask is for you to take the first step.