Multiple times a semester the obnoxious Imaginus Poster Sale swamps the UC courtyard. The poster sale offers first year, and perhaps upper year students, a chance to squander their money on over-used images. Though posters with slogans like “Keep Calm and Carry On” can help make your dorm room feel a little more ‘homey,’ the poster display no doubt makes the UC less welcoming for persons with mobility issues.
Getting from one end of the UC to the other during the poster sale can be difficult and time-consuming even for people without mobility issues. For people with mobility issues, the once-easy task of traversing the UC is not only complicated by the constant need to avoid students who stop in the middle of pathways to gawk at large posters of semi-nude women making out or Johnny Depp shirtless and smoking, but also by the inaccessibility of the UC as a whole. Routes to and from wheel chair ramps become increasingly restricted during the Imaginus poster sale, as well as Fair November.
We at The Ontarion are left wondering if the Fair November and Imaginus solicitors have even paused for a moment to take into consideration the hindrance their displays cause for those with mobility issues.
Students with wheelchairs, power chairs, crutches, motorized scooters, canes, the elderly, the list goes on… all are affected by the inconsideration of the poster sale and Fair November events. Not to mention the mob mentality that students seem to adopt when forced into shallow walkways can be downright scary: trip and it’s likely students will continue to step over you. God forbid you knock over a wall of posters.
When classes end periodically throughout the day and large swarms of students channel through the narrow poster tunnels, the congestion only makes it increasingly difficult for persons with mobility issues to get to and from the bus loop or simply from point A to point B within the UC. Outside the UC, the accessibility issues continue. Seemingly pointless construction directly in front of the UC, in particular the blockaded cement ramp that was constructed during Fair November, is not only a nuisance, but also an added obstacle for persons with mobility issues who are trying to get to the bus platforms.
Some of the staff here recently witnessed a commuter in a power chair trying to get from the bus to the UC having to rely on the help of some friendly passers-by to pick up and move the fencing across the pavement just to make the path clear enough for the chair to get through.
In addition, carelessly built temporary ramps leading into a couple buildings on-campus are equally inexcusable. Ramps leading up to non-automatic doors pose a formidable challenge to the many students on campus who already face limited accessibility, forced to use only certain entrances regardless of the location of their desired destination.
We at The Ontarion would like to see just a little bit more consideration taken for these students. Maybe some extra planning to ensure that more than one route is left wider or open for these students to use, and feel more comfortable navigating.
Or perhaps schedule the poster sale around OSAP pickups and move the poster sale into Peter Clark Hall where it belongs. As we’d like to point out, it makes no difference to us students whether they make revenue from us or not.
When the UC was originally constructed, it was built with the agreement that the majority of the building would be student space, and frankly, the Imaginus poster sale and Fair November disregard this agreement, as they render the UC inaccessible to students with mobility issues. At night when the Fair November booths were shut down, getting from the north to the south end of the UC with a mobility device meant you’d have to leave the building and re-enter at the other side.
Most students on this campus are fortunate enough that these issues don’t present themselves, but they are there and they do affect a large number of students and other people who use this campus. These UC courtyard events need to start taking that into greater consideration.
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