“Why can’t I take the elevator from the lobby of Sawyer to the third floor? I don’t feel up to taking the stairs today.”

That’s a question that I have wondered countless times since my freshman year at Suffolk in 2018.

There’s no denying that I love being a Ram, and that I have had a soft spot for Suffolk since I first stepped foot on campus when I toured it in 2017. Something that I wasn’t told during orientation, however, was just how bleak the elevator situation was.

And during the several years I’ve been here, the elevators haven’t improved.

While I love Suffolk’s campus – or lack of a typical college campus–it’s sometimes difficult to navigate as a person who often faces mobility issues. After all, it sits on the uneven sidewalks and cobblestones of Beacon Hill.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a wonderful place to be. But after hiking up the wind tunnel by Government Center to get to Sawyer, there’s no way I can climb up nine flights of stairs to get to class or the Journal office.

Yet, I’ve waited 15 minutes to get an elevator more times than I can count. Even with five elevators, there is no efficiency. The cars are small and cramped and shake when a lot of people are in one.

Even though the elevators feel fast when you finally make it onto one, the unpredictable wait times are reminiscent of the notoriously unreliable MBTA.

Not to mention that during peak times, the touchpads are “unable to allocate a lift.” It’s a truly dreaded message followed by the giant red exclamation mark that silently screams, “Yes, this is a problem.”

So why are the elevators so frequently supposedly “under maintenance?” They still don’t work.

This issue isn’t unique to Sawyer — the elevators at 73 and Samia have been challenging as well. They’re also painfully slow, so I often feel the need to squeeze inside a car, despite how full it might be.

Here’s one more anecdote for good measure. I lived on the ninth floor of Miller Hall my freshman year and at one point, there was only one working elevator. It stayed that way for two months. That is nothing short of unacceptable for a 19-story dorm building.

When I look back on my tour of Suffolk, it seems crude that we were taken to the beautiful 19th floor of Miller given how difficult it would soon be to get there for such a large portion of the year.

Spending too much time styling my hair or picking out an outfit should be what makes me late to class sometimes. But the reality is that the elevators here leave something to be desired. If I get to campus ten minutes before my class starts, that should be plenty of time to get to my destination.

For over four years, that has not been the case.