On behalf of those members of the Ohio University community who are suffering from either temporary or personal disabilities, I'd like to offer a letter of complaint to the relevant powers that be.
For the last two weeks, the one and only elevator in Bentley ' one of the campus' main classroom buildings ' has been out-of-service. Suffering as I am from a torn ACL and a fractured bone in my leg, I've been forced to use the stairs since the beginning of the quarter, particularly arduous work since I have to carry with me my lecture and term sheets for my students in class, who make the effort to get the most for their tuition dollars. Twice now I've almost fallen from heights of roughly 15 feet. I can imagine that some of my younger compatriots on crutches ' I've seen several coming and going from Bentley ' also have had similarly scary incidents. Two calls to relevant authorities have not changed the situation.
I put in 12 to 14 hour days at this university in the pursuit of excellence in my teaching and budding research careers, facts to which I believe all my students and fellow teachers will attest. Could I trouble the university to please finally fix the elevator in Bentley? We here at Ohio University pride ourselves on the business model that we are currently implementing across campus and to which our hard-earned tuition monies go. I wonder if the balance sheets might tilt more favorably if the university sought new bids for elevator parts and their delivery? I ponder whether my students might suffer in their education if their teacher-of-record is taken from them in the middle of the quarter because of a re-injured leg or freshly injured random body part.
In the meantime, I look forward in the very near future to an ADA-compliant elevator in Bentley. Jack Epstein is a history graduate student.
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Letter to the Editor
