Massey Turning Mobility into an Obstacle Course

It all started with a ridiculous skiing club trip. Before I even touched snow, I went off the chair lift and straight onto my face — with a broken ankle. 

That fall led to surgery, followed by six weeks of non-weight bearing. My two options? Crutches or a knee scooter. Due to my complete lack of upper-body strength, I went with the scooter. 

You'd think not being able to walk for six weeks would be the most frustrating part of recovery. But you'd be wrong. The real challenge was getting around Massey’s maze of campus. 

The university has committed to upholding a safe, accessible and inclusive learning environment in its Disability and Inclusion Action Plan. But the Wellington campus itself tells a very different story. Steep hills, staircase-only access points, and painfully slow (and often broken) elevators make basic navigation a logistical nightmare. 

Over six weeks of using a wheel scooter, I would spend 20 minutes wheeling up practically vertical hills to get to class. It was that or haul my scooter up and down stairs when there was no accessible entrance nearby. And when there were elevators, I developed intimate relationships with the world’s slowest lifts.  

As frustrating as some of those moments were, they only lasted six measly weeks. For disabled students at Massey, these kinds of challenges are the norm.  

Recently graduated student Lucky Crawford, a wheelchair user, recalls how broken elevators and ongoing renovations forced them to develop complex workarounds just to attend class. 

“I had to use one elevator to get up to the floor, then go through an entire class and be let in through a series of doors because the main elevator wasn’t working,” they say. 

In 2023, Massey’s successful course completion rate for learners who had disclosed a disability or registered for disability support was 81.6%. In comparison, Massey’s overall on-campus course pass rate was 92.8% last year.  

Under New Zealand’s Building Code, people with disabilities should be able to carry out ‘normal’ functions within buildings. Additionally, all public buildings must provide accessible routes, including ramps or lifts, and signage.  

Massey has committed to making this happen. Its Disability and Inclusion Action Plan aims to make sure disabled learners are fully included in all aspects of university life. The 24-page long plans says the university should ensure accessible routes around campus, and that information should be available online and in the physical environment.  

But this isn’t a Massey-specific commitment — they should be doing this regardless of their own agenda. The Human Rights Act requires reasonable accommodations to ensure disabled people can access services like education on equal footing.  

But for Crawford, renovations and broken elevators sometimes meant navigating through the rain — with a wheelchair that wasn’t waterproof — just to reach an alternative entrance. “I make a sort of unconscious backup plan for every route I have to take to class,” they say. 

The university’s action plan says evacuation procedures should consider disabled students, including evacuation chair numbers and locations. But for Crawford, the staff’s emergency plan they discussed would have required a nearby gym bro to come to the rescue.  

“It would involve putting my chair in the elevator and sending it down on its own, and me sort of going down the staircase as quickly as I physically could.” 

“The alternative is we find someone incredibly strong who can carry me.”  

Crawford says the old K Block stands out as one of the worst examples of inaccessibility on campus. Staff were supportive where they could be, even covering the cost of taxis when needed. But Crawford makes a fair point: “If you had to catch a taxi to get to a part of the school, your school isn’t accessible.” 

Jack Apperley, a Music student and cane user, also pointed out how parts of campus — like the infamous K Block — are simply inaccessible if you can’t use the stairs. 

“The big one I had a complaint about was how frequently the main elevator was broken,” he says, estimating it was out of service at least once every week or two over the past five years.  

And when disabled students were able to get to class, course work itself was impacted too. Apperley said some projects aren’t the most disability-friendly, in particular for him was a live streamed music festival project. The mandatory, second-year Music assignment has a lot of roles that require high mobility.  

Both Apperley and Crawford expressed gratitude for supportive faculty, but it falls flat when students can’t get to class without relying on taxis, or friends to lift their mobility device up flights of stairs.  

For students with long-term or permanent disabilities, there’s no end date to these barriers.  

You shouldn’t have to plan emergency exit strategies that rely on finding someone ‘incredibly strong’ to carry you. You shouldn’t have to make a mental map of every broken lift, steep hill, or workaround just to get to class.  

Accessibility isn’t a compromise, it should be the norm.