Campuses elevators violate California Code of Regulations and ADA provisions

Elevators are beneficial to all students at Riverside City College. They provide accessibility for the disabled and others who need assistance to get to and from class with relative ease which would otherwise be impossible. We feel as though the importance of these elevators have been put off no matter how many issues we have printed that have addressed this issue and we are tired of it.

When will the elevators finally be taken care of and kept maintained?

Furthermore, there have been many cases of students getting stuck in these elevators.

“I was coming from class going to my car and there was a group of us, we got stuck on the second floor,” RCC student Nick Zavala said. “The door shut but it wouldn’t move, it went down like halfway then it came back up and when the door opened we ran out.”

Interim Director of Facilities Gary Cinnamon, addressed the maintenance of elevators on campus in an interview with Viewpoints.

“Maintenance is ongoing, they come out and do preventive maintenance,” Cinnamon said.

“We require preventive maintenance on a monthly basis. If you’re talking about elevators breaking down, in other words stopping service, that happens. Elevators are running thousands and in a year, hundreds of thousands of cycles. So, the statistics on it are actually pretty good. Will all elevators operate all the time? No. That’s just a fact. Hopefully, our goal is to increase the efficiency of the elevators.”

Cinnamon explained the process of updating the elevator permits and what’s stopping the maintenance of the elevators.

“All elevators are (permitted) by the state of California. That’s all elevators and the state manages that process. Elevators, I think, are in an annual basis, but the state manages that process. We don’t do anything from that standpoint. So when you go into an elevator and look at a permit, it will tell when it was inspected and when the permit expires, so some elevators show that permits expired. That doesn’t mean the elevators are out of service or anything, it just means the state hasn’t updated them.”

However, many elevators on campus do not have an updated permit and that is a direct contradiction to the California Code of Regulations Title 8 §3001 c, which states that, “No elevator shall be operated without a valid, current permit issued by the Division. The permit, or a copy thereof, to operate a passenger elevator, freight elevator or incline elevator shall be posted conspicuously and securely in the elevator car.”

Emphasizing the word “current”, the violation being committed by this school is highly unacceptable as it continues to violate the Americans with Disability laws enacted to help protect the disabled.

The sheer idea of our school violating a law and ADA provisions that affects the safety and accessibility of our students is unacceptable, especially after an ADA lawsuit was filed January 10, 2013 by a former employee of the college, Salvador Gomez Jr.    

We believe that these ongoing problems must be fixed one way or another and bring attention to the violations this campus is committing because they affect everyone on this campus.

Viewpoints' editorials represent the majority opinion of   and are written by the Viewpoints' student editorial board.