“I’ve been working here this summer, so I’ve been waiting on the construction, and I’m like, ‘Wow, maybe the new door is going to be faster and look better and greater,’ and then it’s here, and it’s like, ‘Why is it so slow?’ … You know, this is my college, I chose to come here, but do better guys,” said student Lucretia Little about the new doors at the front of Campus Center.
As a student employee myself over the summer, I know that I couldn’t wait for work to finish on the Campus Center entrance so I could get in and out of the building normally again. I don’t think anyone was prepared for what we saw when they were finally finished, though.
Now we are left with two revolving doors and a wheelchair accessible airlock-style door. So far, the doors are controversial. Some say they understand the appeal and the desire to stop the wind from breaking them. Others say they’re more likely to break than the previous doors. Personally? They suck.
First, accessibility is a key issue here. The supposedly accessibility-friendly button-powered door is built with one door to the right and the other to the left. It is hard to imagine how a wheelchair user would be able to turn independently to get through.
On a campus that already falls flat in certain areas regarding accessibility, this only digs the hole further. Wheatley-Peters and McCormack both have button-accessible doors, but they’re narrow, and neither building has nearly enough doors to guide the flow of traffic. The new doors at Campus Center recreate the same issue. As time passes, students could adjust further to the revolving doors, and foot traffic will likely lessen as an issue, but the topic of accessibility doesn’t go away.
I should clarify that I am also biased — I hate revolving doors. It takes a certain amount of coordination for multiple people in a row to use a revolving door that neither I nor most of the population has. I’ve avoided revolving doors whenever I can because of my hatred for the wretched things.
There’s more to it than my personal biases, though. It’s been proven through close observation from the Upper Level. The morning shuttle bus typically has at least 25 people on it, likely more if you consider people crowding in. Let’s say that 50% of students leaving the bus will go through Campus Center, whether to stay in that building or go to another. That’s far too many people trying to use their tired, early morning brains to get through those doors effectively.
Additionally, why are they so heavy? I’ve walked through them — reluctantly and for the sake of journalistic integrity — and found that they possess an abnormal level of friction that makes them harder to move. Take this, and combined with how much traffic is caused anyway by those doors, you’re talking about long lines in the already-crowded space outside the Campus Center bus loop.
It may seem like I’m nitpicking or finding a reason to complain, but I’m not the only one who thinks this. Student Latray Barber Washington said, “I think they look nice at least, but I do think compared to how they were before, it’s a lot smaller, and a lot of people get off the UMB bus. There are a lot of crowded spaces, and I think that having a revolving door is definitely causing an issue,” he said.
Ruairi Pierce, another student at UMass Boston, said that the doors seem more environmentally friendly, but also have been slowing down foot traffic, as other students had complained. Pierce added, “I guess a working door is better than a broken door, but it’s really a lateral change more than any accountable move.”
Accountability is already a struggle at UMass Boston. Far too often do issues get a nice new gloss of paint over them rather than addressing and fixing the root of the problem, and the doors are one example. Here’s hoping that they still work by the end of the semester, or this won’t be the last of seemingly endless construction on campus.
