Hey there present students and alumni, I'm Samantha and I’m from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at NUS. 

For the past 2.5 AYs, I've noticed that the FASS faculty is not exactly wheelchair-friendly. Getting around from one AS to the next requires climbing up and down multiple flights of stairs, which can be tiring, especially from AS3 to AS1, which happens to be a walkway with long flights of stairs. Many of my friends and I often dread walking along this route and I'm sure many of you do as well.

While there are lifts in some AS buildings, getting to those lifts require climbing staircases, meaning that people with physical limitations have to struggle to reach facilities that are supposed to help them in the first place. That's pretty ironic, don't you think?

I’m sure that most of us have have had leg injuries at one point or another - whether it’s a sprained ankle or a bruised knee. Those injuries may have caused slight inconveniences to our physical movements for short periods of time.

If you are/were a FASS student, you would know by now that the faculty has flights of long and steep staircases and climbing them can be pretty tiring. Now imagine if you have a fractured foot and have to navigate those flights of stairs on one foot in order to get around. That sounds torturous doesn’t it? Well, that’s because it is.

Struggling to move up and down the steep staircases, especially when the walkways are crowded, can be dangerous as there are usually a large flux of people rushing to their next venue. The contrast in pace between the fast crowd and someone struggling up or down the stairs can potentially knock the latter off his/her balance. Plus, the extra effort needed to get from one end of the faculty to  the next can potentially prolong one's injury.

2 weeks ago, I dislocated my kneecap and as a result, I've been hobbling around school on crutches. I've noticed other injured peers on crutches as well and based on personal experience, getting around school is really a challenge, especially when you're in pain and limping from LT 11 all the way to CLB during lunch hours. 

I’ve only been injured such a short period of time and have already felt so much exhaustion on campus. It's hard to imagine how students with permanent physical disabilities navigate around the faculty. I’m sure we can collectively agree that the installation of more lifts can help to alleviate the navigation struggles that people with physical limitations experience. These lifts can also be used by people feeling unwell and the old cleaners around school who work tirelessly to keep the campus clean. Without a doubt, having such facilities would greatly benefit the general population.

That being said, I've created this petition with hopes that if a large number of the NUS students, alumni (and even staff) share similar sentiments and sign it, NUS may take this suggestion into consideration and take steps in providing such facilities for the future members of the NUS population. I’m not sure if the other faculties are facing a similar issue, but if they do, hopefully this petition can potentially help them out as well. 

I plan to ask some professors for help in sending this petition to the NUS Office of Facilities Management at the end of this semester. No student deserves to physically suffer getting from one lecture/tutorial to the next, especially when you are facing restrictions to your mobility that is out of your control. Hopefully, getting around the FASS faculty (and around the campus in general!) will be less strenuous and more wheelchair-friendly in the near future. 

Thank you in advance for your signature and to the current students, all the best for finals!:)

Regards, Samantha