UWM Winter Accessibility Meeting Discusses Improvements for Students and Faculty with Disabilities

Winter accessibility on the UW-Milwaukee campus has raised concerns, specifically for students and faculty with disabilities or limitations that may make them more susceptible to winter-related accidents and dangers. 

These concerns prompted some members of the Physical Environment Committee (PEC) to create a “working group” to improve these conditions, which met for the first time this Tuesday, April 23. 

“I heard from some of the students and employees around campus with disabilities that this was an issue that several people were falling and were injured due to the ice on campus.,” said Meghan Murphy-Lee, a representative from the Chancellors’ Advisory Committee for Accessibility on Campus in the PEC, who organized the meeting. 

Other attendees of the meeting were Nicole Stelzner, the Accessibility Services Manager at the Accessibility Center and a member of the Chancellors’ Accessibility Committee, Melissa Spadanuda, The Associate Vice Chancellor of Facilities Planning and Management, and Rick Koehler, Trade Superintendent of Facility Services, according to their statements during the meeting and the UWM staff directory. 

Early on in the meeting the group collectively decided that to create goals and action items more accurately and realistically, Koehler should outline to them his team’s process during winter weather, specifically concerning snow and ice removal. 

Koehler went on to say that, depending on the severity of the “snow event,” his team, which usually consists of six or seven people, will begin their efforts as early as 4 a.m., often working 12-hour days. He said each person is assigned a section and they are specifically instructed to work on crosswalks, but if a plow or a bus goes by, their work can be undone instantaneously. 

“We go through campus, then we go through it again, and then we go through it again…it’s really never-ending,” Koehler said. 

Stelzner expressed specific concerns about building overhangs, where melting snow creates a puddle below, which can re-freeze into a dangerous patch of ice, a situation that caused the slip and fall of one Stelzner’s coworkers in the Accessibility Center. 

Koehler says that he is notified when a slip or fall occurs by the Department of University Safety and Assurances, and Koehler’s crew will put up signs or even use electric heat tape to help the snow or ice melt more quickly. 

“We have a passion for it…when we hear, you know, of slips and falls, that affects us,” said Koehler. 

While the severity of the weather affects their actions and abilities, other precautions and procedures his crew have taken in the past include, brining concrete before a snowfall, salting snowy areas, shoveling and chipping ice. 

He noted that Environmental Services is responsible for directly outside the buildings, including the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) ramps and stairs, and that city streets and sidewalks are outside university jurisdiction. 

Spadanuda mentioned creating work-orders for areas made dangerous by the weather, which prompted the group’s first explicit goal: to simplify the process of submitting a work order, and raising awareness in the UWM community of how to do so. 

Murphy-Lee suggested a second goal of working with the Chancellors’ Accessibility Committee to create a group with “physical or vision disabilities” to do a walk-through of campus:

“Because I think that this is a lot more difficult for people…in wheelchairs or walkers or crutches or who can’t see, to manage the campus. So the average person might be able to walk around it, but…if you have some sort of disability, you might not,” said Murphy-Lee. 

Murphy-Lee said she has even heard of people being driven around campus because they could not safely navigate it themselves. 

As brainstorming continues, Stelzner mentioned that the Chancellors’ Accessibility Committee has been working on an accessible campus map, that include marking ADA entrances. 

Koehler said that once this map is created, if the “best” pathway from each building was identified, his team could prioritize them, as well as the paths up to ADA entrances. 

The group’s third goal emerged: identifying the safest pathways from building to building. 

Spadanuda suggested that, depending on individual “accessibility issues,” it may be best for some people to stay home during extreme winter weather, to which Murphy-Lee replied:

“Well if it is an extreme event, then the whole campus should be closed, right? You know, if it’s extreme enough that you’re telling students or people not to come to work?”. 

Stelzner commented that the university faces many challenges due to their “limited resources,” which Murphy-Lee later agreed with:

“There’s simply not enough people to do the job,” she said. 

At the conclusion of the meeting, Murphy-Lee and Stelzner were tasked with working in coalition with the Chancellors’ Accessibility Committee in determining the safest pathways. Spadanuda and Koehler were tasked with improving the work-order submission process and exploring the logistics of a campus sweep by people familiar with accessibility issues. The group agreed to meet again after Memorial Day.