New policies pose challenges for Zags with children

This was on of my first published pieces, I wrote it when university administration released five new policies, two of which restrict where children are allowed on campus. These tentative policies strain student-parents, faculty and staff.

Photo Courtesy of Gonzaga Bulletin, photographer Kathryn Graham.

Faculty, staff and students with children have struggled to understand the implications of two policies that were recently rescinded regarding the presence of children in classrooms and on campus. 

The policies stated, as a general rule, children are not allowed in classrooms or the workplace. They outlined a few exceptions, including emergencies. 

Many with children are outraged by the proposed policies. However, the administration is calling for the need to regulate potential distractions in the educational environment.  

“It is a proposed policy, it is in draft form now,” GU Chief of Staff John Sklut said.

After rescinding the policy, the administrative plan is to continue developing the policy until it can be implemented, according to Sklut. 

As of now, there is no policy preventing children on campus, but implementation of a policy setting parameters should be expected in the future.

Senior Vanessa Villela, a mother of two, said she has never felt comfortable bringing either of her children to class. Many times, she has chosen to miss class to take care of her children.

Villela recognizes the value of others’ education and doesn’t wish to distract them by bringing her children to class. However, she also feels that she has no other choice but to miss school. 

Villela, a biology major, missed an exam last year because she thought she was going into labor. She was able to retake her exam in the testing center two weeks later, with her 2-week-old son in her arms. 

As a mother, Villela has experienced various emergency situations with her children. But she is held to the same rules as other students.

“No matter what emergency there is, I can’t miss more than the six classes,” Villela said. “I have to use [absences] wisely.” 

Transfer student LoReisa Crafts experienced the same struggle after the birth of her daughter. 

Both mothers expressed a lack of resources from the university. 

“I’ve actually called campus to see if they have housing resources or child care resources, and they didn’t have any,” Crafts said. 

Crafts, whose husband was deployed before the birth of their daughter, has been navigating the student-parent life with very little resources and without the presence of her husband. 

One available resource is lactation rooms for moms. A resource that Villela was given the opportunity to use, but Crafts was not. 

“No one told me,” Crafts said, fighting back tears. “That’s crazy — I would have brought a pump or something.”

GU, unlike many other universities, does not provide daycare for the children of students, staff and faculty. According to the Education Department, there are over 1,500 schools that offer on-campus daycare centers. 

“When I was at Oregon, their ‘GSBA’ — ASUO, the Associated Students of the University of Oregon — they were a force,” said Dr. Eric Cunningham, who is a father of seven and history professor. “They ran subsidies for a student child center. They ran an entire constellation of day care centers, pre-kindergarten — it was absolutely amazing.” 

According to Dr. Cunningham, GU’s lack of day care is a result of the university not making it a priority to make resources available for our student and working parents.

“It has been a topic of conversation, discussion and research for quite some time now,” Sklut said. “As to what would be the best way to establish a relationship with an off-campus provider, to allow for child care and daycare for children of staff, faculty and students.”

State regulations and liability issues have been slowing down the process of providing some form of daycare for student-parents, staff and faculty. 

Part of the conversation includes the possibility of an on-campus child care facility, giving students who are going into a childcare-related field the opportunity to learn from hands-on experience, Sklut said. 

“In the absence of a campus daycare facility, or options that are made available to students and made available in a financially affordable way, we have to face the fact that students may need  to bring their kids to campus, at least,” Dr. Brian Steverson, faculty president, said. 

“Nobody brings their kids to work because they think it’s fun, or cute. Sometimes, you’re just stuck,” Cunningham said. 

For students like Crafts and Villela, education is disrupted every time an emergency happens  when their children can no longer attend daycare. If a daycare center were to be implemented on campus it would illustrate that the university actually cares about student-parents, according to Villela. As of now, both mothers feel supported by their professors than they feel from the university.

“Is there a way for us to reasonably accommodate the needs of students who are parents on those occasions when they need to bring their children to campus for a short period of time?” Steverson said. “Are there ways to accommodate that and make it easier for those students to focus on their academic work without this additional worry?” 

Steverson recognizes the need for administration to set some boundaries when it comes to the presence of children on campus. He said he feels there was a lack of communication between the administration and the people whose lives would be impacted by the policies.

“I didn’t think about bringing them, because I didn’t know if I could,” Villela said. “I had heard about the policy but I didn’t know where it stood.”

Although the practical aspects of the proposed policies are needed, some staff and faculty feel that the relationship among the administration staff and faculty has taken a step backward.  

After a two-year drafting process, an expansive faculty parental leave policy was implemented in September. This policy was successful due to the collaboration between faculty and administration. After working together so well on that policy, the ones recently proposed have incited many emotions, from insult to confusion. 

“It was a huge punch to the gut,” Steverson said. “We have been working very hard for the past two years to build up confidence in a culture of shared governance. Administration,

President McCulloh, AVP Killeen, HR — everybody. This event, that two-day period where these policies were just dumped down and the content of the policies, undid most of that good work.”

“Lately, administration has been taking to putting out blanket, one-size-fits-all kinds of rules,” Cunningham said, “And not only is it insulting, they’re not even good rules.” 

The policies were sent to the staff and faculty via email. Many questions and concerns were spurred in response to them. Dr. Sean Swan, political science lecturer, responded with such questions. Many professors, such as Cunningham, believe Swan’s questions pushed administration to rescind the policies after 24 hours. 

Although Swan said he feels like he did nothing outstanding, he asked questions like: when it comes down to taking care of their child or canceling class, what choice should the parent make? How many disturbances, in the classroom, have actually occurred over the last 10 years? How does this policy align with the Catholic social teaching on work and the family?

Swan said, other than his email, there was no direct dialogue among staff, faculty and administration until Dr. Robert “Skip” Myers, vice president for Policy Planning and Administration, released a statement. 

“While each of these policies have been the subject of a great deal of collaborative work over the past year, the feedback I have received subsequent to their release makes clear that the level of community engagement necessary to ensure that the policy development process was sufficiently consultative has been insufficient, particularly as that process relates to the two policies regarding Children on Campus,” Myers statement said, provided by Sklut via email. 

Myers has resigned effective Nov. 22, with Sklut to fill his position in the interim.

“The questions we received, what it is really highlighting, is our need to further develop our policy development process, to incorporate a higher level but appropriate level of community engagement in the development process,” Sklut said. 

Along with these two policies, three others were also released. One will be implemented after a short revision process, while the other two were rescinded and are back in the drafting process for further development. 

This post was published for the Gonzaga Bulletin. To view the original post, click here.