College’s Wheelchair Speed Limit

As a 38-year-old disabled person, I am appalled by “Speeding Wheelchair Users Are Put on Notice” (Dec. 14). For Los Angeles Valley College to put a speed limit on electric wheelchairs is utterly discriminatory. It is telling these students that they are not trusted by school officials to control their only mode of transportation. I use an electric wheelchair and consider myself to be a very safe driver. In fact, in my numerous visits to Staples Center and Dodger Stadium, I have yet to run into or cause bodily harm to anyone.

Valley College needs to stop segregating its disabled population and begin treating its disabled students with the respect they have striven so long to earn. Discrimination is a thing of the past. Being disabled is difficult enough. Valley College should not punish its entire disabled student body for an issue that might be the fault of a few careless students.

Greg Shipman

Los Angeles

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How ludicrous, stupid and just plan insensitive. I’m a faculty member of a community college that has several wheelchair-bound students. As I walk across the campus, the near misses I observe (and they are rare) are the result of inattentive “temporarily able-bodied” students.

Most of the temporarily able-bodied don’t think to look for disabled students any more than they think to look for anyone else. I have often narrowly missed colliding with a student when wheeling audiovisual equipment to my classroom, because the student was inattentive and walked right into my path. Should I be cited and fined? What should we do with the administrator at my college who is blind and who is frequently seen in the building in which I work bumping into people in the lobby who are so wrapped up in their own conversations that they just don’t see the guy?

I’m afraid that Valley College is just one example of the insensitivity we as a society are developing to those among us whom we declare to be less fortunate. We create barriers for them and then blame them for their failure to meet our standards.

Robert B. Harris

Lancaster

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Some administrators seem determined to make Valley College one of the country’s wheelchair-unfriendly colleges. The absurd implication of the 4-mph speed limit seems to be “if you’re late for class, get out and walk briskly or run.”

The modifiers “bound” and “confined,” which are so often misapplied to wheelchair users (the wheelchair represents freedom and liberation), will again be applicable. We’re confined by the rule, and bound to be late for class.

Art Blaser

Professor, Political Science

Chapman University

Orange

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Valley College’s new regulation is a stellar example of the slippery slope of knee-jerk policy. Offenders will receive a ticket or even expulsion. Although no collisions have been reported and no citations have been handed out on the 20,000-student campus, administrators feel the policy is proactive.

To avoid legal exposure and prevent this policy from being discriminatory -- that is, having a disparate impact on a class of individuals (wheelchair users) -- the college will wisely soon initiate the following: Walkers, including individuals pushing baby carriages and delivery carts, and drivers of maintenance carts cannot exceed 4 mph. All people on campus are prohibited from riding bikes, running, walking while talking, walking while using cell phones, walking while eating, walking while drinking, walking while chewing gum. New speed limit and other warning signs will be posted. Security guards will be provided with speed-radar guns and pedestrian intersections will be equipped with cameras.

Good work, Valley College!

June Isaacson Kailes

Playa del Rey