Can New York City be Everyone’s Campus?

When touring colleges, The King’s College might have looked a little different from other colleges and universities. Instead of a campus built on a plot of land, King’s occupies three floors in a Lower Manhattan office building. If you were to look through some of the brochures, you would see the phrase, “New York City is your campus.” But is this really the case for all students?

King’s currently has one on-campus housing location in Downtown Brooklyn. The commute to school poses unique challenges and complicates daily functioning for students with disabilities looking to possibly attend King’s.

The most affordable and practical way for students to commute to school is, by far, the subway. No other mode of transportation in New York City is as comprehensive or cost-effective as the subway.

Still, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) public transportation system must take several strides to make the subway system more accessible. 

Why is the MTA in New York City so notoriously inaccessible? 

The MTA subway system is an artifact from a world before the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. While this law focused on protecting Americans with disabilities from discrimination in the workplace, it also mandated that public places be accessible to people with disabilities. 

The New York City Subway opened in October 1904, which means they were constructed long before the accessibility mandates. Most buildings in New York City were also built before the passing of the ADA, which further limits the accessibility of the city as a whole.

Currently, just 126 out of 472 stations are accessible. Thirty years since the passing of the ADA,  more than two-thirds of all subway stations remain inaccessible. 

City Point, the only on-campus housing location King’s offers, is described as “a fifteen-minute train ride from campus” on the King’s website. However, this is only true from the Hoyt Street station, which is currently inaccessible. 

“Most people use the Hoyt Street station, which is not accessible to me,” said Lauren Brooks, a Fall 2022 NYCJ Semester student who uses a wheelchair. “So, I either go to Jay Street-Metrotech, DeKalb Avenue or, if worse comes to worst, Atlantic Avenue, which is a 20-minute walk.”

ADA presented subway stations with a unique challenge when forced to transition to accessibility. Most stations are under busy streets, so reconstruction is constrained by the location of the tracks. But what do subway stations need to be considered accessible? 

The vast majority of stations are only accessible through stairs from the street level, the mezzanine, and finally, the platform. Stairs are not an option for someone who uses a wheelchair, crutches or a walker. Adding elevators for subway stations is difficult because construction is restricted by underground infrastructure, space available on street level, and space available within the station. Additionally, people with disabilities need escalators to make traveling from the station to the platform more accessible. 

The MTA must also address the gap between the platform and the train to improve accessibility. For someone using a walker or a wheelchair, this gap is hard to avoid when boarding and exiting the train. These gaps can often be too wide, too high or too low for someone to safely travel from the train to the platform or vice versa.

“If you were in the middle, the front or the back, we still need to work on being able to get a wheelchair or walker in safely,” said Christopher Greif, Executive Member of the New York City Transit Riders Council, in an interview. “We need to know what stations have this problem.”

Brooks echoes the problem of the gap between the subway car and the platform. 

“I was coming home one night, and because of the gap, my front wheels got stuck, and my friends had to push my chair up onto the subway,” said Brooks.

Aside from public transit, Brooks also faces the inaccessibility of New York City as a whole. 

“New York, in general, is terrible with accessibility,” said Brooks. “But nowhere is great. I'm from the LA area, so I'm not coming from greatness either. Broken or cracked sidewalks that pushed me onto the street, that's the norm here. I didn't expect a utopia. I would be silly to.”

On her TikTok account, Brooks documents the inaccessibility of establishments in New York City. One post, which showed a coffee shop entrance only accessible by a step, amassed 820,700 views.

For future students, there is hope. In June 2022, the MTA pledged to make 95% of stations accessible by 2055, 

Under the terms of the agreement, the MTA will add elevators or ramps to create a stair-free path of travel at 95 percent of the currently inaccessible subway stations by 2055. 

Andy Byford, who served on the New York City Transit Council from 2017 to 2021, was instrumental in the recent strides of modernization in the subway. He spearheaded the “Fast Forward” program, which along with signal improvements, aims to make 50 more stations accessible.

“Since Andy Byford was the president of MTA, there has been more accessibility,” said Grief. “More elevators, more ramps, bigger signages. They’re working hard to make sure public transportation is the safe way to travel.”

From Oct. 2019 to Jan. 2022, the Jay St. Metrotech station was used as an “accessibility lab” for new features intended to make navigating the subway easier for those with cognitive, visual or motor impairments. These include “tactile guideways,” colorful way-finding stripes on station floors and stairs, Braille signage and interactive subway maps. 

Officials are also testing five free apps to assist people with disabilities, such as NaviLens, which provides sign information in audio for visually impaired people. This new technology is a great first step in laying the groundwork for a more accessible future of public transportation in New York City.

“I would like to see them do more,” said Grief. “There are areas that need to be a little clearer and colors that need to be a little brighter. The screen that they have there is a start. I have to thank Andy Byford again because he started focusing on accessibility with knowledge.”

For prospective students at King’s with a disability, there is still work to be done to make the transportation system in New York City accessible for everyone to use. 

While King’s is not presently able to be everyone’s campus, at least comfortably, the groundwork is being laid for a more accessible future.

Drew Richardson is a contributor to the Empire State Tribune. He is a senior majoring in Journalism, Culture and Society and Business Management. He serves as the Production Intern at CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime” show. This article originally ran at the EST this spring.

TKC Alumni Feature: Meet Michael Sheetz, The Space Reporter Who Also Surfs

On a recent Friday afternoon, Michael Sheetz hopped on a video call as he sat in the backyard of a modest French house. 

Calling from France, specifically Chinon in the Loire valley, to New York means he is six hours ahead and is enjoying the early evening with relatives. He had just finished covering a two-week-long space conference in France, and he and his wife decided to visit family there before heading back to the States. Though extremely busy, he made an effort to join the call. 

Potted plants and vine branches fill the backyard. Clouds cover the sky, but they don’t cast a feeling of gloom. Sheetz, wearing a simple gray shirt and a silver watch, brushed back his dark brown hair and clinched his scruffy jaw as he proceeded to answer question after question about his life back in America. 

As a California kid, Sheetz dreamed of places like New York City, Paris and outer space. Now a space reporter for global business news leader CNBC, his job encapsulates all those things. 

Growing up in Orange County, Calif., Sheetz had a normal childhood filled with baseball, surfing the Pacific and debate competitions. At a young age, Sheetz  subscribed to The Wall Street Journal and slowly became a news junky. He felt like he never fully appreciated his comfortable lifestyle in California until he moved across the country for college. 

Receiving the Founders Award, a full-ride scholarship to The King’s College, Sheetz moved to New York City in the fall of 2013, majoring in Politics, Philosophy and Economics with a minor in Journalism. 

“If there is any place I’m going to get exposure to what being a journalist looks like and being around other journalists, that's where I’m gonna have to be,” he said. 

While at King’s, Sheetz took a few journalism classes and was encouraged by professors to explore the realm of business journalism. 

“Michael is a smart, talented, articulate guy who was an enthusiastic part of the King’s community and journalism program,” a journalism professor at King’s, Paul Glader, said. “He dedicated himself to journalism and business reporting and is seeing great results.” 

During college, he took up three different internships at CNBC – working in breaking news for CNBC.com, on the TV assignment desk and the production team on the show “Mad Money with Jim Cramer.” He described working there as drinking from a fire hose of daily information.

Since he lived in the city, Sheetz took a bus to Englewood Cliffs, N.J., to his job at CNBC throughout college. 

Along with those internships, he served as editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, the Empire State Tribune, and worked there all four years of college. 

After graduating in 2017, Sheetz worked full-time for CNBC.com's markets team. He stayed due to the supportive culture of the company. 

As he began to gain more experience in journalism and reporting, he started to pull a few threads that would begin to unravel his future career opportunities. 

“Instead of trying to follow along with what everyone else was doing, I wanted to find something that no one was covering, that my editors were interested in, and something that I could really own,” Sheetz said. “I loved the idea that companies are made up of individuals and everyone from the janitor up to the CEO all make decisions that are personal to them through their own knowledge and experiences.” 

Sheetz always assumed that he would head back to the west coast to write for a newspaper after putting in his four years of college but realized his new passion would best thrive in the world’s financial capital. 

“Being in New York, you’re surrounded by Wall Street and all these big financial institutions. I loved the idea of trying to tell a little bit of the people’s stories behind all that money,” he said. 

Still looking for that specific thing Sheetz could call his own, he asked his editor if he could cover SpaceX launches that were happening over the weekend. He quickly realized that this $470 billion industry was not getting enough coverage. 

“[There is this] substantial existing industry where new companies created in the last 20 years are changing the game, some of them backed by billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and no one here is writing about it,” Sheetz said. 

He continued to pitch space stories to his editors and started covering the beat full-time. 

Though space is a broad topic, Sheetz focuses explicitly on the business and investing side. 

“It is a growing and changing beat. And today, I can hardly write about everything that is happening; there are so many companies newly public,” Sheetz said. 

Now, having over 170,000 followers on Twitter and launching a weekly newsletter, Investing in Space, Sheetz has pulled in an audience interested in space news. Though he has attended a fair share of rocket launches and space conferences, since working on the space beat full-time, Sheetz worked from home during the pandemic before returning to the office this fall.

For him, a typical day of work looks like sifting through hundreds of emails. He might watch a rocket launch webcast or tune into a press conference from NASA while writing articles.

“[Until recently], my entire existence of being a full-time space writer has been from a work-home environment,” Sheetz said.

Since he works as the news cycle requires, he has the flexibility to go back to his California roots.

Sheetz drives to Rockaway Beach in Queens a couple of times weekly to surf. But the news doesn’t stop just for him. At dawn, he packs up his surfing gear and also his laptop. After a couple of hours of catching some Atlantic ocean waves, he’ll head home or to the office – always ready for a call in case news breaks on his way.

The first paycheck he got at CNBC, he used to buy a fish surfboard. He now owns four; two fish surfboards and two shortboards. As the saying goes, you can take the boy out of California, but you can’t take California out of the boy. 

“I found a passion for using my free time to disconnect and stay offline and use that as an opportunity to recharge,” he added.

Sheetz and his wife, Joy, also a King’s alumna, have maintained a tight-knit group of college friends they often see on the weekends. 

“I have a great community of King’s alum that I’m close with; we have really stuck together in the Brooklyn area since then,” Sheetz said. 

“Michael has always shown up. Whether in high school to win national championships or to volunteer at church, he’s done so with excellence and a smile on his face,” Iain Coston, a friend of Sheetz, said. “Seeing him excel and shine at CNBC, lead new initiatives, and get hugs from Shaq is no surprise to me.” 

Now that the pandemic has subsided, Sheetz has returned to the office on a hybrid schedule, though he has enjoyed working from home.

Since international travel has loosened restrictions, CNBC deployed Sheetz to cover two exclusive space conferences in the South of France, World Satellite Business Week and the International Astronautical Congress (IAC).

Though Sheetz does not often travel for work, he could not miss the opportunity that two space conferences would be happening in the same city back to back. Sheetz moderated panels, interviewed many attendees and covered both conferences. 

But being a beat reporter is not always so glamorous. It's tough. Journalists are always in a competitive environment, wondering who will get the first exclusive or intel on the latest news. You have to be constantly on. 

“Overcoming the guilt of missing a story. Getting beat on a scoop or someone else getting an exclusive that I wanted,” Sheetz said. “I’m not omniscient. I can’t control the news; it doesn’t all flow through me. Which is what it feels like it should be.” 

Among many of his accomplishments, Sheetz started something at CNBC that no one else had attempted to take on full time.

“[My greatest accomplishment has been] building a beat from scratch. I didn’t invent space reporting, but no one was doing it full-time at CNBC,” Sheetz said. “That has been insanely satisfying. Having something that I built up, all the way to having a personal brand in space, to having CNBC be known for its space reporting.”

This article has been republished courtesy of The Empire State Tribune, the independent student newspaper at The King’s College in New York.