TO: Dr. Vincent Boudreau, President of CCNY

FROM: Lawrence Pak, Student of CCNY

DATE: February 27, 2023

SUBJECT: The Inferior Interior Design and Accessibility of the NAC Building

Built in 1970, the North Academic Center (NAC) shows its worth in age with its outdated interior design, forty-plus years of its elevator service, and the failing of multiple escalators. In turn, this raises multiple concerns about students’ ease of access throughout the school and the students’ ability to perform that get affected by that ease of access. Renovating these areas is a must for the future of the students attending class at the NAC building.

As many students and faculty would suggest, the interior of the NAC building is outdated and rundown; often causing complaints about the effectiveness of the building’s accessibility. Listed below are some of the complaints gathered from attendees of the building:

• Elevators are small, slow, and are deteriorating
• Escalators connecting floors have been under maintenance for months
• Stairwells next to elevators are extremely thin, about one person wide
• Doorways serving no purpose other than making it confusing to navigate the NAC
• Classrooms are marked confusingly due to the layout of the rooms on each floor, like a labyrinth

Unreliable building accessibility affects students’ performance in school. For example, CCNY provides only a 10-15 minute transit gap between classes, if one student were to go from one class from one building to a class in the upper floors of the NAC building and still make it on time,  they would need to either: leave their first class early, walk up flights of stairs/escalators to beat the dawdling elevator, or be late. Students attending class in the NAC shouldn’t need to make an entire plan in order to get to their classes on time rather, focus on what they’re going to learn in their next lecture.

The building’s interior also brings up a concern of what would happen if there was an emergency and students needed to evacuate. The outdated design of the door hallways, floor layout, and stairwells will negatively impact how efficiently the students evacuate the NAC building. For example, room 5/111’s only exit and entrance is located at the end of a hallway. We need to put the students’ mind at ease to make sure that students’ thoughts during class are not on most effective ways to evacuate the building but, on the subject they’re learning during that class.

I propose that we allocate more funds to the development and improvement of the interior design of the NAC building to ensure the ease of mind and ease of access of all students attending class at the NAC. This will, in return, allow students to focus more on their education rather than the needs to get that education.