While the average walk around the halls for Benilde St-Margaret’s students might be easy and convenient, some students find it difficult and challenging to walk around due to injuries and disabilities. BSM does account for these students’ needs.
With two floors, BSM could be hard to get around without some utilities. Fortunately, BSM has many utilities that help injured people, like the elevator. If students take a science, art, or business class they need to go downstairs and the elevator is a helpful way for injured students to get to class on time. “I use the elevator every day I have art class,” freshman DaJohn Yarborough said.
BSM will do many things to make it easier for anyone injured or disabled. From giving more passing time to students or giving them a parking pass to park closer so they don’t have to walk as far, BSM is very accommodating. They also give out backpack passes to students so they do not need to go back to their locker after every class which minimizes walking. “[BSM] let me park in the senior lot last year when I was a junior and injured. It made it easier for me to walk into school,” senior Gus Bell said.
BSM has done an amazing job over the last 20 years to improve accessibility not only in the school but at school facilities. They have added things like ramps in the bleachers for people in wheelchairs or using scooters. “If someone was on crutches they could kind of hobble up and down stairs but if they were on a scooter or in a wheelchair they wouldn’t be able to get to the basement. Now we have an elevator and our bleachers have ramps now,” Senior High history teacher Megan Kern said.
There is just one area that can be tricky to get around; the Taher lunch line. This can be tricky for injured or disabled people to get around because of its crowdedness and size. “I don’t think there’s a part of the building that’s hard for anyone to get to, except the lunch line at Taher. It’s hard to get through there, you can’t do that with a wheelchair,” Kern said.
BSM knows that it can get hard for an injured or disabled person to get around so they give some leniency for tardies. They give extra passing time and do not count the tardiness due to the circumstance. “I don’t think I was very late but my teachers never gave me a tardy for it,” Bell said.