Bulldogs for Universal Design, Butler’s New Accessibility Advocacy Group

A few weeks ago, the SGA Student Senate endorsed a new student group called Bulldogs for Universal Design, or BUD for short. The group’s goals are to advocate for disabled students through disability education, ability-based diversity, universal design and allyship. The group is already working to make exterior portions of campus, such as curb-cuts accessible to students, faculty, staff and visitors.

Cassandra Stec |  cmstec@butler.edu

After around a semester of advocacy and work, Butler’s new accessibility advocacy group Bulldogs for Universal Design (BUD) is officially SGA endorsed. This means the organization can now apply for grants, reserve rooms on campus and officially advocate for the community they represent.

Becca Mattson, sophomore music education major, is the president Bulldogs for Universal Design (BUD). She uses a wheelchair and often has to contend with a variety of infrastructure failures on campus in order to go about her day to day life.

“I think there’s a lot of accessibility issues that I’ve had here on campus,” Mattson said. “[One such is] curb-cuts-  there are a lot of situations where there aren’t curb-cuts or where the curb-cuts don’t meet our criteria. I’ve had issues with elevators. I’ve gotten stuck in the College of Education elevator for a good while and none of the emergency systems worked in that elevator. Nor did I have Wi-Fi or cell service. There’s been issues with everything from doing laundry to taking trash out here at Fairview; a lot of times the accessible routes are a lot longer and I’ll have to go around. Obviously there’s also issues with content. I’m legally deaf and there’s a lot of issues getting captions [for classes] and things like that. There’s also a lot of social stigma being a wheelchair user on campus.”

The idea for BUD was started by Mattson and her friend Audrey Erickson, sophomore political science, criminology and sociology major. The two had noticed Mattson’s struggles as a wheelchair user on campus, both in and out of academic and dorm buildings. While Mattson had been advocating for herself behind the scenes, such as meeting with President James Danko, she knew there were other students who were having difficulties and needed help advocating for themselves. 

At the Student Senate meeting, Senators saw firsthand how many accessibility issues there are for disabled students at Butler that are not typically thought about. The Senate normally meets in the Reilly Room and presentations are held on an elevated stage; the stage can only be accessed through one of two staircases, each having three steps. Mattson and the club’s VPs, Erickson and Lauren Geerts, sophomore elementary education major, were faced with an accessibility issue from the get-go. 

“There were stairs going onto the stage and I could not get on stage,” Mattson said. “We came in and started laughing, we could see there were three steps to the stage. I said ‘alright y’all when we go up there we have to make a dramatic showing of getting me up on stage’ as a joke, just cause it’s very funny. Cade actually carried my wheelchair up and they [Erickson and Geerts] came on either side of me and helped me get up and that’s how I got on stage. I also could not reach the podium; When I went up to speak, the podium was above my forehead.”

During BUD’s call out meeting, students in attendance were given a survey asking questions about a variety of things including what accessibility issue they wanted the club to tackle first. Curb-cuts were the resounding winner and BUD executive membership dedicated an afternoon to walking throughout campus to take photographs and identify accessibility issues with Butler’s curb-cuts. Through that campus-wide search, there were 28 pain points – a rating scale designed to measure the degree to which an individual’s life is interrupted by chronic pain – identified that create barriers to disabled students and visitors.

The documentation revolving around these pain points and curb-cuts were then sent to a variety of administrative officials.  The document showed various locations in outdoor areas of campus that were hazardous to Mattson and other disabled students and visitors. Majority of the pain points cited issues with a lack of tactile paving, accessibility issues, large gaps between walkways and roads, excessive water accumulation and holes in the sidewalk that would cause a wheelchair to get stuck.

Mattson and other BUD executive leadership then met with a variety of Butler administrative staff such as John Lacheta, Operations Administrative Manager, Patrick Keller, Manager of Operations and Building Maintenance, and Kathleen Camire, Director of Student Disability Services.

“We met with them to discuss our goals for the curb-cuts and they said that they were going to help with this project,” Mattson said. “They also requested that we send them the list of disability concerns that we asked our members to vote on that were brought forth by the student body. Initially we were hoping to get the project done by the end of 2022, but due to supply shortages that might not be possible. But essentially the standard is that we will work with them as long as we’re updated. Time will tell how the project goes, but they seem very cooperative so we try to err on the side of cooperative action when possible.”

In addition to the administration’s receptiveness towards fixing curb-cuts, BUD was able to get a student accessibility concerns form created. The form will be run by BUD and will hopefully allow them to continue to advocate to the administration on students behalf. 

While BUD is not yet on Butler’s Engage platform, the organization is active on Instagram, budatbutler, and can be reached at any of the executive leaderships’ emails or at budatbutler@gmail.com.