Chair Joseph on elevator repairs and campus accessibility
Joseph raises concerns about elevator repairs and accessibility at CUNY campuses, asking how CUNY ensures accessibility in older buildings and historic landmarks. The Chancellor says accessibility is prioritized and campuses work around limitations through class scheduling.
We've also heard that many students about the needs for elevator repairs at CUNY's campuses.
Elevators are essential for accessibility.
As it's updating the adaptive technology, how does CUNY ensure accessibility as campuses, especially in older buildings?
If a building cannot be made accessible due to historic landmark status, what steps do CUNY take to ensure students can?
Require accessibility modification and you know take full advantage of coming to your university because of mobility issues
Well, first of all, we prioritize all that has to do with accessibility and compliance, right?
It's one of the criterias that the CEO, Batista, mentioned in his comments.
So that's one of the things that we prioritize in determining what critical maintenance might be required.
And then the second part, then we work with the campuses, particularly in the ones that might be older, right, in which it might be unfeasible to do that.
And then they work with the campuses to make sure that the classes that are taught for students that might require that might not need to be part of that building if you have staff that need those things.
I mean, in our vision of the world, we'd love to have all the buildings to be fully accessible.
But I think the campuses work very hard to make sure that if we do have some that are not, that clearly nobody's missing out because of that.
And then the scheduling of classes and the scheduling of offices, you know, and I can tell you having been president of two campuses is one of the things that you figure out while you work on the things where you can actually.
Change the conditions and build the ramps and do the changes that are needed.
Thank you for that.