Despite the picturesque view, the hilly terrain of Pepperdine University poses a challenge for mobility compared to other universities in Los Angeles, like the University of Southern California (USC).
While Pepperdine offers some accommodations for mobility issues, such as free on-campus shuttle transportation, its offerings have some drawbacks, according to previous Graphic reporting. USC offers more solutions, including free Lyft rides for all students and other ride services for people with mobility disabilities, according to USC’s website.
“We usually have two types of people who use our services,” said Carly Gottlieb, a student worker at USC’s Disabled Access to Road Transport (DART) program. “One are people who have mobility issues that are more permanent in nature, others are students who get injured throughout the semester.”
Accessibility at Pepperdine
Pepperdine’s terrain and campus layout can be a challenge for people with mobility needs, said Sandra Harrison, executive director of the Office of Student Accessibility.
“If I used a chair for my mobility and I came and looked at Pepperdine, and I looked at UCLA, UCLA is obviously a lot easier for me to transit myself around campus,” Harrison said.
UCLA’s campus is mostly flat, a contrast to Pepperdine’s campus.
Typically, fewer than 10 students require mobility-related services for both permanent and temporary mobility needs at Seaver College, although this fluctuates depending on the year, Harrison said. Most students with mobility needs fall into the latter category, with a small uptick around spring break arising due to injuries.
“In several semesters, there’s only been one consistent need for a student to have transportation the whole semester,” Harrison said. “And at that point, it’s hard for Operations to fund a program when there’s not a lot of need for it — even though for that one person who needs it, it’s real, legitimate and is needed.”
Both the Office of Student Accessibility and Transit Services provide several ways to meet the mobility needs of disabled students.
Two campus shuttles have wheelchair lifts, which drivers are annually trained to use, said Marilyn Koziatek, director of Facilities Services and Campus Operations. Since there are several campus shuttles, which are cycled in and out of usage for various reasons, students should coordinate their mobility needs with the Office of Student Accessibility to ensure they have a ride. Some shuttle stops, including the one outside the Seaver lot, are not wheelchair accessible, according to previous Graphic reporting.
In addition, Campus Operations provides a separate mobility transport service for individually coordinated rides to class, though the vans used to transport students are not wheelchair accessible, according to Pepperdine’s website.
The Department of Public Safety also provides emergency pickup services for students, which Harrison said often leads to long waits due to the lack of a designated officer assigned to the service.
Student Perspectives
Community Engagement and Service (CES) annually hosts hosts Disability Awareness Week (DAW) at Pepperdine. Through panels and workshops, the event aims to educate and reduce stigma related to disability, including mobility needs.
Sophomore Isabella Morton, a student worker for CES, helped plan Disability Awareness Week. She said she learned more about the accessibility barriers students face on the Pepperdine campus through her involvement in the week-long programming.
“For example, our doors being really heavy is very difficult for someone with a disability to work with,” Morton said.
Morton said DAW helps students acknowledge the effects disability can have on students’ academic and social life.
“It [DAW] takes a taboo out of it,” Morton said. “It just raises awareness on the way people are living, and it just takes away this kind of fear towards the subjects.”
Junior Kaitlyn Burke, head coordinator of Disability Awareness Week in 2025, said her mobility is impacted by rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic autoimmune disease that causes joint pain and restricts her mobility. She has issues accessing the library elevator.
“You have to key into the library elevator,” Burke said. “No one’s keycards work unless you have a handicap placard or the librarian does it for you.”
Some ramps are difficult to navigate, Burke said.
“If you’re coming down from the Smothers lot to get to the cafeteria, and you have to rely on the ramps, they’re too steep,” Burke said.
Burke said she had issues getting housing accommodations for her disabilities, making her unable to secure housing on the first floor of the Rockwell Towers residence hall. She resides on the fourth floor, which occasionally creates a challenge if the elevators are broken.
“In order to get my accommodations approved, I turned in over 70 pages of medical records to OSA and had two meetings with them, and I still had to fight them for a couple things,” Burke said.
Burke also said students with disabilities have a hard time residing in first-year dorms, which only offer one ground-floor suite.
Burke said the presence and involvement of Pepperdine administrators are important to establish improvements for student accessibility.
“You can sit on as many [Disability Awareness Week] panels as you want, but until upper administration is there, it’s not gonna matter,” Burke said.
Free Transportation at USC
At USC, students with mobility issues can use the school’s free Disabled Access to Road Transport (DART) or Lyft rides to get around campus.
DART assists students, faculty and visitors by providing free rides for anyone with mobility issues, according to USC’s website. USC also offers all of its students free rides through Lyft, as long as they are being dropped off and picked up within certain area guidelines.
Students with permanent mobility challenges can send their schedules to DART at the beginning of the semester, and DART drivers will pick them up approximately ten minutes before all of their classes each day to make sure they arrive on time, DART Manager Chris Ravard said.
“We don’t qualify, we don’t validate. We do ask that your condition is in line with the disability for a mobility-restricted type of service,” Ravard said. “You’re going to put your class schedule. Wednesday 9:50, from this location to that location.”
Gottlieb said students can also typically get unscheduled DART rides if they order the ride at least 15 minutes in advance; however, these rides may arrive late depending on whether someone with a scheduled ride was already set to be driven somewhere during that time. This could present a limitation for disabled students looking to get a spontaneous or last-minute ride.
“If people need a spontaneous ride — say they have like a club meeting or want to get food — we just ask that they send us a message at least 15 minutes in advance so we can prepare to go to them,” Gottlieb said.
DART provides wheelchair-accessible golf carts with a ramp if the person with mobility issues feels that it would be easier for their circumstance.
Ravard said there are no qualifications or permits necessary for joining the DART program and their system is based on trust.
“It’s just a trust and respect thing,” Ravard said. “We don’t want to have to ask you these personal questions that might be sensitive about whether or not you need our services. We hope they respect what we do in our services and won’t cross the line.”
Gottlieb said DART drivers will often drive around campus to see if people with non-permanent mobility disabilities, like a broken leg, need help getting across campus.
“If one of the DART members is driving around and sees somebody with a mobility issues like having crutches or something like that, we will approach them and say ‘Hey, have you heard about DART before?’” Gottlieb said. “Then we give them that direct contact where we’ll send them a text message with all the information, so it’s just easy to open links as well.”
The USC Lyft service also provides WAV rides, which are cars that have space for non-collapsible wheelchairs, according to USC’s website.
USC student Madeline Toranto said she has had a positive experience with USC’s Lyft program overall, but students without disabilities can only use the shared-ride option. This means they will most likely travel with other USC riders and will not ride alone unless no other students have requested a ride.
“It’s definitely a net-positive experience,” Toranto said. “I don’t love the shared concept a ton.”
Toranto said shared rides make it harder for all students to get to the exact point where they need to go.
“This past weekend, my friends and I called the Fryft [ride-sharing program] to a location off campus that also has another building with the same name but a different address,” Toranto said. “He accidentally went to the wrong address and we couldn’t change our destination. He was like, ‘No, I can’t change it because I have to pick up someone else and then someone else.'”
Cameron Breier, another USC student without a disability, said she also finds it hard to use ride share, but that she likes the free Lyft program overall.
“It’s annoying because if you call, it’s only one to two spots available to begin with,” Breier said. “I like that you can get in it for free.”
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Contact Henry Adams via X: (@henrygadams) or by email: henry.adams@pepperdine.edu
Contact Kaiya Treash by email: kaiya.treash@pepperdine.edu
Contact Ellya Asatryan by email: ellya.asatryan@pepperdine.edu
