How Can I Make My Campus Center Accessible to Disabled Students? Start with your Heart
by John D. Kautz

It was the first remodeling project to make a place accessible so the healing word of Christ could be heard. It was as crude as many of our retrofitted buildings with wooden ramps placed over concrete steps or a chairlift sharing a stairway. But when the crowd removed the roof tiles and lowered the paralytic to Jesus, the problem of accessibility was creatively confronted.

It may not be as simple for many of our structures today, but this same creativity may be required to make our ministry accessible to all people on campus. As with the paralytic, building accessibility may be the first step we can take to provide access to those who cannot negotiate steps. 

I have learned secondhand the difficulty one step, let alone a whole flight of stairs, can cause for a person to gain entrance into a building. Each Sunday when my family comes to our campus ministry center for worship, we go through the same ordeal as did the paralytic; instead of ripping off the roof and lowering our son, Daniel, into the building, I drag his wheelchair up the stairs. Daniel has become the call to worship, since I don't start the service until I've gotten him safely up the steps.

I often wonder what pedestrians think as I come running out on Sunday mornings in my robes to greet the family, and "bump" Daniel up the 20 steps, often with my robes catching in his wheelchair or my cincture becoming a potential trip cord to send both of us catapulting down the stairs. Wheelchairs and clerical garb can produce interesting situations, as I observed one Sunday when visiting a local parish. While rushing down the aisle to begin the service, the pastor's cincture caught on Daniel's wheelchair parked in the aisle, bringing the pastor to an abrupt and startled stop. With a few embarrassed snickers, he
unleashed himself and continued his processional. And more than once Daniel's wheelchair has thrown the ushers brigade into turmoil as they prepare to march in formation to the front with the offering and discover a wheelchair cutting off the right flank. Wheelchairs and litters can cause problems for an orderly Lutheran congregation.

We may have to be as creative as the friends of the paralytic were to get the job done, but there are obvious places to start. Most communities and campuses have "experts" in the area of accessibility regulations and specifications. During my visit with the director of disabled student services, it was the issue of accessibility which he mentioned first when I posed the question, "What are disabled students' needs and what can our ministry be with them?" Even though there are less "concrete" barriers which keep students, with disabilities from participating in our programs, the most obvious is the inaccessible building.

After one year of carrying Daniel up and down those stairs, I decided it was time to do something about creative accessibility. In our building, a possible solution was to turn the building upside down; our lower, accessible level is unused on Sunday mornings, while the chapel is up two flights of stairs. Moving the worship area to the ground level, without cutting holes in the roof or floor to add an elevator, we made our worship space and service accessible.

This is only a partial solution, but it is a first step as a witness to disabled students that we welcome them into our building. Other modifications of bathrooms, door pulls and switches will need to be considered as we pursue the goal of what changes must be made to bring a building into full compliance with accessibility codes. All of this is done knowing we may not have a rush of disabled students the first day we put up our "wheelchair accessible" sign, but it affinns all we proclaim about an accessible Christ.

Once the disabled student can get into our building, what do we have to offer that person? Everything we offer any other student and a little bit more. The disabled student is often looking for a place to participate and fit in, rather than stick out.

Our son, Daniel, had his best two summers at camp - not when he attended a special needs camp, but at our local church camp. The camp had made a few buildings accessible and the director was willing to provide an additional counselor to assist Daniel some of the time. While the church camp was not fully accessible and not every program was specialized for disabled campers, Daniel felt more involved and affirmed at the church camp than he had at the camp for handicapped children.

Disabled students want and need the same enrichment, spiritual direction, community support, opportunity for growth and service that other students desire. In a conversation with Betty, a disabled student who is active at our center, she shared her desire to simply be a part of the ministry. Like many people with disabilities, her definition of herself does not only focus on her limitations, but on her talents and her fullest possible participaton in church and society. Betty acknowledged there are times when disabled students may benefit from a special needs group, but more often disabled students are looking for ways to be integrated into the regular campus ministry programs. Keeping this in mind, special campus ministry programs may not be required, but special ways to participate in ministry programs are.

Signing for the hearing impaired or providing some assistance on a retreat for a student with mobility impairment become small adjustments to make campus ministry fully accessible for all.

The director of disabled student services at our university identified one area of need: a support community for new students. Often a disabled student comes from a strong family support system which has provided for many of the student's emotional and physical needs. As with any new student, there is a need for developing independence and transferring dependency to others. For the disabled student, this process becomes more crucial and sometimes more difficult. There will be many groups on campus that are inaccessible, both physically and attitudinally to the disabled student. But campus ministry has the opportunity to be the "family" of God: a loving, supportive community for all people.

Betty emphasized her need for an accepting community. While getting into the building may present some difficulty for her, it's what is offered inside the building that attracts her. Even though she would not categorize this need for acceptance as unique because of her disability, she recognizes the continual struggle of being different from the rest of the able-bodied society which does not always accept differences. This need for acceptance would probably rank high on the list of most students, but disabled students discover a vital dimension of their self-worth and energy necessary to function in a highly competitive environment.

The issue which will probably be the determining factor for all dimensions of accessibility is the accessibility of the heart. Without it, building accessibility and program accessibility will be ineffective at best or, more than likely, absent altogether. Logically and theologically, it would be this dimension of accessibility we should start with, but often it is the last addressed and the most difficult to discuss. 

Tom is a young man who has been involved in our ministry for several years. Building accessibility presents no problems for him since his disability involves emotional illness and communication problems. He participates in many of our programs and is the first one to sign up for our retreats. But this third level of accessibility is not yet fully achieved for our faith community. Tom is tolerated by most students, but avoided by some. It is interesting to watch the careful organizing of transportation to see who will have to take Tom in their car. As is often the case, he ends up riding with the campus pastor who is hired to be compassionate and used to being around disabled people.

Betty objects to the latest label for people with disabilities: "physically challenged " She observed that everyone is physically challenged to one degree or another. For some, the physical challenge is to make a perfect run down the ski slope or improve their backhand slam in tennis. For Betty, the physical challenge is to get into and out of her car and wondering how long before she must resort to a wheelchair for her mobility.

All of this raises for Betty and other disabled people a tendency to talk around the issue of their disability. Betty said, "People observe the physical limitations, but it is the emotional aspects which are not recognized." I suspect this is because these are the more difficult ones to acknowledge and accept. To ask a disabled person how it feels to be disabled and to be sensitive to their feelings is a frightening and difficult encounter. I doubt that anyone at our center has asked Tom how it feels to be isolated from others because of his disability or ever inquired what caused his disability. 

It is more than just the embarrassment of prying into someone's private life that keeps us from asking those questions. It is the risk of vulnerability which indicates an accessible heart. When I begin to engage a disabled person and their feelings about being disabled, it is impossible for me to ignore my own feelings and prejudices, my own discomfort and anxiety.

At a deep level our bodies and senses define who we are. While we are able-bodied we can ignore this shell we live in (or at least take it for granted until we reach 40). But the disabled person's condition confronts us with another reality about our bodies and causes us to reflect on these deeper issues of self and meaning.

It is interesting how easily we dismiss the limitations encountered by the disabled person and assume we have therefore accepted them. Actually, we probably have accepted the obvious implications of those differences.

Betty talked about the interaction with some students who intended to pay her a compliment when they said: "We don't even think of you as being disabled." But Betty's response was to feel they had ignored and denied a vital part of who she is; as if to say to a black person: "I don't even think of you as being black-" What this ignores for Betty is that on the simplest level much of her energy is spent trying to get from place to place.

To be fully accessible to the disabled student means we will not diminish their handicap by ignoring or overlooking it. It is what they spend a major part of their energy trying to cope with so they can function in a society based on the survival of the "quickest". Accessibility of the heart really means a sensitivity to each disabled person's situation. Some students will want to acknowledge their limitations and talk freely about them; others will want to be like everyone else and try to de-emphasize the disability. And some will have a healthy balance of both.

To make our ministries fully accessible we will need to provide a place to talk about what it feels like to have a disability. To make ourselves accessible to disabled students we may want to experience some dimension of disability. An excellent program called Welcome to My World allows able-bodied people the chance to be handicapped for a brief amount of time. It does not create pity but awareness, and this might be the first step to any type of accessibility.

I suspect the reason those New Testament people were willing to rip the roof off the building was because they knew Jesus would accept the paralytic and minister to him. Accessibility for Jesus did not start when they renovated that house; it started in his ministry much earlier. It started in his heart which is the heart of God. While we can start at any level making our ministries accessible to disabled students, our ministry will only be authentic and true to the gospel when we've integrated all three. 

Accessibility of buildings, accessibility of our programs, and accessibility of the heart are components of creative accessibility where all people are part of God's creation and welcomed into the community of Christ.

John D. Kautz is Lutheran campus pastor at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Prior to that he was campus pastor at the University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh and served several parishes. He and his wife have three children, one of whom is physically disabled. Daniel is 12 years old and has spina bifida. John has been active in several disability groups and chaired a task-force to develop a theology for ministry with the disabled for the American Lutheran Church.