In December 2013, a Carleton student was left stranded on the sixth floor of Robertson Hall during a power outage.
When the power went out, the elevators stopped working and Shawn Humphrey had no way of getting downstairs in his wheelchair. His friends stepped up and carried him down six flights of stairs.
This never should have had to happen.
The stairs in Robertson Hall have no backs to the steps and can be harder to navigate.
The fact that the students had to use them in the dark is a safety hazard to everyone involved, not just Humphrey.
While we commend the students who stepped up to help him, that job should have been done by campus safety.
Humphrey’s phone calls for help to campus safety and Foot Patrol were left unanswered.
Safety’s phones were left unmanned to deal with another issue on campus and foot patrol phones were out due to the power outage.
Both systems failed the student they were supposed to be helping.
There are also other buildings with notoriously bad elevators, such as Loeb. What if a student needed to get downstairs quickly from one of those buildings?
There needs to be a more thought-out and effective plan put in place to deal with these situations.
Safety needs to be there for all its students, and keep in mind the differing abilities of the diverse student body it’s supposed to be serving.
