Members of SGA and UVM Disabled Students Union celebrated the installation of eight new bus benches on campus last Tuesday, Oct. 22.
The benches are a product of a nearly two-year long collaboration between the two organizations, said Sydney Daniels, a senior and former SGA senator who started the project while she was part of the Committee on Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity.
The project aimed to make taking the campus bus system easier for people who cannot stand for very long, Daniels said.
“This is more than just bus benches at bus stops,” she said. “This really highlights the importance of universal design.”
Daniels said there are eight benches in total placed at the six campus bus stops with the highest usage, including the stops at Patrick Gym and Mercy Hall.
The project was organized with the help of UVM Planning, Design & Construction and UVM Parking and Transportation Services, Daniels said. The benches themselves were constructed and installed by UVM Physical Plant, she said.
Altogether, the benches cost about $26,000 to construct and install, Daniels said.
SGA and UVM Disabled Students Union held a ribbon cutting ceremony on that Tuesday afternoon at the Howe North bus stop. As DSU President Lillian Olsen cut the red ribbon that hung between the benches, the crowd cheered and applauded.
Olsen, also one of the founders of DSU, said the bus bench project was one of the first projects the organization advocated for when it was created in 2022.
The project began when Daniels saw an Instagram story post by a former DSU co-chair Katie Marshall that detailed their experience using transportation on campus as a disabled person, Daniels said.
“That’s something that we can absolutely change, and something I really wanted to use my position to work on,” Daniels said.
Daniels said she embraced the motto of the 1990s disability rights movement—”nothing about us without us”—when working on the bench projects.
“I communicated with Lillian and a lot of other folks to make sure that this project was something that would adequately represent the constituents who brought it forward,” she said.
In remarks made at the ceremony, Olsen said DSU is calling upon the University to implement more measures to make life on campus more accessible for disabled people, including more accessible options for Orientation and for all dorms to be fit with ADA doors.
“We really, really would like to see training for faculty to increase awareness of disability and inclusion, as well as to educate faculty on Student Accessibility Services processes,” Olsen said.
Erica Caloiero, vice provost for student affairs, attended the ceremony and said it was important to show solidarity with students.
“It’s really important to be in solidarity with disabled students,” she said. “[They] have been really clear over a period of years that an accessible campus is the least that we can offer as a public institution and as the place they’ve chosen to be,” she said.
Caloiero said she supports the DSU’s plans for making campus more accessible.
“Today is evidence of the support that disabled students and all students have here,” she said. “The ability and the right to access the education and everything that goes along with education is clear, and we need to continue working towards providing that access.”
