Posted on behalf of Marsha Dawson, Dean of Students, Student Affairs and Campus Life
Dear Faculty,
Since Wednesday, October 19, 2022, the Baker Walkway elevator has been unavailable due to maintenance. As a result, several students have lost the most effective and accessible pathways to and from their classes and residence hall. While other pathways exist, they may provide unique barriers, safety concerns, or prohibitive timeframes depending on each student’s path options and particular circumstances.
There will be students who may not have a historical relationship with Student Accessibility Services (SAS) who may be directly impacted by this closure which would delay SAS's ability to generate official accommodations. Regardless, we encourage any student experiencing a significant barrier to access to connect directly with SAS and develop an appropriate accommodation plan. However, given the acute and short-term nature of this outage, as the elevator will be back in service effective Friday, October 28, 2022, we also ask that faculty consider allocating general flexibility around timeliness to students who identify the Baker Walkway or other access restrictions as a hindrance. We ask for this grace and special consideration, now and in future outages.
As we continue to explore other short-term solutions that promote more direct access in the form of transportation, we thank you for your consideration and flexibility in supporting our students. If you have any questions, contact either of the offices below.
Marsha Dawson, Dean of Students, Student Affairs and Campus Life, at studentaffairs@ithaca.edu.
Ian Moore, Director, Student Accessibility Services, at sas@ithaca.edu.