Second-year medical student James Ehlers stands next to chart that shows location of larger-sized seats in Bakst Auditorim 

Student Life

The Tale of the Tape: Medical Student’s Detective Work Ensures Students Find Comfortable Seats

Bakst Auditorium now has labeling identifying inclusive seating.

Given his background as a mechanical engineer who once worked on rockets and missiles, second-year medical student James Ehlers knew how to tackle the mystery of the variable-sized seating in Bakst Auditorium.

With a tape measure.

“I had a friend who was bigger, like I was at the time, and I remember him waving me over to show me which chairs he’d found that were larger than other ones,” recalled Ehlers.

It’s really distracting (when you can’t fit in a seat).

James Ehlers

The seats weren’t labeled and seemed randomly placed so Ehlers grabbed a tape measure from home and measured every seat in Bakst, producing a chart of the larger and smaller seats spread across the 269-seat auditorium.

The last major renovation of the auditorium was in 1993, and Ehlers determined that for some unknown reason seat sizes varied between three to six inches in width from the smallest-sized seats. That can be the difference between discomfort and ease when you’re a larger-bodied person like Ehlers and you’re taking lecture notes or a test.

“It’s really distracting (when you can’t fit in a seat),” he said.

Vice chair of the executive board of the Student Committee on Medical School Affairs (SCOMSA), Ehlers brought up the subject at meetings and students were supportive. Ultimately, Student Affairs, especially Assistant Dean Paige Curran, MA, helped Ehlers with a decidedly low-tech solution: a plaque with a seating chart identifying larger-sized seats installed near the entrance to the auditorium and yellow labels on the armrests of rows containing those seats.

“This was a solution that was a small thing, but it made a huge difference for students,” said Associate Dean of Student Affairs Angela Jackson, MD. “It helps students know that they are listened to, and that we take it seriously.”

Ehlers said he hasn’t noticed seat size differences in other auditoriums on the Medical Campus but thought it worth investigating University-wide.

“I think that’s a great long-term goal,” he said. “We thought all the seats were the same size until we measured them. If this is something we’ve experienced here, how much more of an issue could it be with a lot more students on the main campus.”