Sep. 18 — While most of Enfield House’s fire alarms went off around 8:30 in the morning on the 17th, there was an exception: the mods designated to accommodate disabled students.
When residents asked why their alarm was not activated, they were allegedly told that the accessible mods are on their own alarm system, and while someone had been assigned to activate it for the drill, they had forgotten to do so.
One wheelchair user pressed Steve Fratoni, the Director of Environmental Health and Safety, as to why wheelchair users were expected to congregate in front of EDH, which is up a fairly steep incline from the depression Enfield sits in.
Wheelchair users may have difficulty getting up such an incline, and are likely to be significantly slower than able-bodied students moving on foot.
The student told Fratoni that they would be more likely to flee a fire toward the Enfield parking lot, since it is not uphill. In response, Fratoni allegedly told the student that they would be run over by a car if they were to do that, and that someone from their mod would be able to push them up the hill in an emergency.
The student argued that having a modmate push them up hill is not an acceptable solution, because then they would be unable to evacuate while home alone.
Lori Bouchard, Assistant Director of Campus Safety, allegedly told the student that a member of campus safety would come find them if there were an emergency. The student replied that Campus Safety could not reliably find them in an emergency, given that Campus Safety forgot about the accessible mods entirely in a drill, and in fact had failed to account for one resident of an accessible mod after the fact, who had slept through the alarm and whose absence wasn’t noticed.
Disabled students require additional consideration in fire safety planning, as they may not be able to independently evacuate in ways that able-bodied students can.
Residents of at least one accessible mod in Enfield have formally complained to the college and escalated the issue to local fire authorities.
