Editorial: The Gooch elevator

We at The Pacer eagerly support our American rights.

Freedom of religion. Freedom of speech. Freedom to address our grievances. And of course the freedom of the press.

Each of these freedoms are intrinsic in our right to pursue happiness, which with the rights of life and liberty, are the greatest rights we have as American citizens.

There are also some other rights we at the Pacer value.

Unfortunately, we residents of Gooch Hall (if you knew how much time we really spent in 314, you would understand why we say ‘residents’) find that one such freedom is constantly being violated in the form of a broken elevator.

In accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, “public accommodations” are required to maintain facilities which enable everyone—including the disabled—to utilize with the same ease and convenience as provided for everyone else.

Failing to provide these basic accommodations such as elevators or wheelchair ramps constitutes discrimination and is a direct violation of the law.

Equally as illegal as failing to provide these is the failure to properly maintain them. Elevators do no one any service if they are perpetually “out of order”.

Yet not a week goes by that the Gooch Hall elevator doesn’t experience some major malfunction that shuts it down.

UTM may be a relatively small campus, but we do have several students with various disabilities and impairments—visually or muscularly, etc. —that rely on our elevators to get to class.

We at the Pacer are not merely addressing the issue because we are ourselves inconvenienced (we can deal with that) but rather, we respect the rights of our fellow students and expect that same reverence from our university.