VALLEY COLLEGE : Air Conditioning Sought for Gym

Valley College student leaders and the director of the campus gym for the disabled are campaigning to get a telephone and air conditioning for the facility.

Students in wheelchairs are prone to heatstroke where there is no air conditioning because they experience difficulty in regulating their body temperature, said Jim Gayton, the college’s adapted physical education specialist.

“Several years ago, we were evaluated by the state and they recommended we get a phone and air conditioning,” said Gayton, who also serves as the gym’s director.

A phone is desperately needed in case of an emergency, he said.

Gayton said earlier this year, when one student who uses a walker tripped and fell on uplifted cement leading into the building, it took between 10 and 15 minutes to get help because there was no phone.

“This is my goal--to get them a phone,” said Ragna Vidar, student government commissioner of disabled students.

Don Graham, student government public relations commissioner, said that the gym’s equipment also is in bad shape. The padding on some of the aging equipment is held on by electrical tape, he said.

Mary Ann Breckell, vice president of administrative services, said that installing air conditioning in the disabled gym, located in a former weight room in the women’s gymnasium complex, depends on funding from the financially strapped state.

She said that all 400 of the college’s switchboard extensions are in use, which means that for the gym to get a phone, someone else would have to give up an extension.

“Six nursing instructors share an extension,” Breckell said.