Student parents, families seek improved accessibility

Budget concerns cause difficulties for child care to make accommodations.

By Megan Pearl

Published Feb. 26, 2010

Campus organizations are creating a task force to make campus a more accessible environment for students who are also parents.

"The individuals that I have worked with have brainstormed some of the places where the university lacks in being a family-friendly environment," Graduate Professional Council President Sarah Symonds said.

Among the issues of concern are child care, lactation rooms, maternity leave policies and other resources for student parents.

"Imagine you're a mother, and you're going to school and looking for a place to breast feed," Missouri Students Association President Tim Noce said in defense of the bill. "Would you be comfortable randomly asking someone, 'Where can I breast feed my baby?' No. We're trying to get all these resources into one area."

MSA passed the bill condoning the task force through the Senate on Wednesday. The legislation will be deliberated in GPC next week.

MSA amended the resolution due to Operations Committee member Justin Mohn's concerns about the phrase "family-friendly."

"Family-friendly is really vague," Mohn said. "Is my idea of family-friendly the same as everyone else's?"

Mohn suggested the example of certain people not viewing parents who are homosexual as families and said he wouldn't want to see this reflected in the committee somehow. The wording was altered to reflect making campus more accessible to non-traditional students rather than "family-friendly."

After the amendment, the bill passed unopposed.

Symonds said the committee also plans to work with Mizzou Families Involved Together, an organization for student parents that has been focusing on obtaining a space for students to study where they can also bring their children.

"During the fall semester, issues were brought to my attention, and the first idea was to make a women-friendly task force, but as we looked into it, it seemed like families needed to be targeted," Symonds said about the origin of the committee. "We want to work with the graduate school to get numbers."

The university does not keep track of which students have children or families.

"Everything will come down to money, we understand that," Symonds said.

One of the biggest objectives of the group will be improving child care through the hours of service.

"The current daycare system is from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and if you're late you are charged a fee," Symonds said. "There is Pigskin Preschool during football games but no equivalent for basketball games or night classes."

Julia Shea, who has been the director of the Student Parent Center for 15 years, said more hours and availability would require more money to expand the facilities and also to pay more employees.

State law requires 35 square feet for every child. Also, there must be a certain number of adults depending on the number of children and their ages.

"I know that our hours are a bit of a problem for some graduate and nursing students, but because of our budget situation we don't have the finances to extend for staffing," Shea said.

The facility is licensed for 44 children, and there is a waiting list for those who did not get in.

"In order to get more money, I'd need more children, but to have more children, I need more space," Shea said. "It's a vicious circle."

Shea said the big concern for the Student Parent Center is if its budget were cut, there would be no other services or support available at the university.

"It would severely disrupt resources for students who are parents or will be parents at the university," Shea said.