The Faculty Senate Council on the Status of Women
calls on the University to reverse the decision to close the University
Childcare Center (UCC). Eliminating childcare would cause irreparable
harm to a large number of women, and to their careers and leadership
opportunities on the Amherst campus.
Closing UCC would hurt all young families, but it
would have a disparate impact on female faculty, staff, graduate
and undergraduate students. Despite the great gains made in the
past decades, working women still bear an unequal burden in our
society. If the University dismantles its childcare programs,
women staff and students will be forced to make difficult decisions
about their work at the University, and their children's safety
and education.
A university with no childcare facility will fall
behind in the recruitment and retention of women scholars. In
2000, women comprised only about 30 percent of the faculty. The
University should be doing everything possible to increase this
number. Instead, the elimination of family services will make
it extremely difficult to recruit and retain more women faculty,
and threaten the productivity and grant-raising abilities of women
at both the tenure-track and tenured levels.
UCC's early childhood programs have won national
recognition for excellence. The center's programs rank in the
top 7 percent of similar programs nationwide, and it has been
considered as a model for other early care and education programs.
The UCC teachers deserve to be rewarded for their achievements,
not fired. UCC has provided internships and mentoring for 30-50
graduate and undergraduate students each semester, and research
opportunities to the School of Nursing, and Psychology Department.
UCC furthers the teaching, research, and service missions of the
university.
The administration's decision to close UCC also
signifies that it has bought into a very atomistic, privatized
orientation that has devastated public resources nationwide and
is now threatening the future of the University. The logic that
imagines UCC as a mere "frill" or service for the few
is easily extended into a vision of UMass as a "frill"
for the few. Both UCC and UMass are vital collective public goods,
and we must not allow them to be seen in any other light.
Each year, our Council on the Status of Women plans
the very successful "Take Our Daughters To Work Day."
The idea of bringing our daughters to the workplace is to show
them that women can have successful careers in a wide variety
of occupations. But this year, the administration seems to be
sending the opposite message. Either women must stay home with
their children, or every day will become "Take Our Daughters
To Work Day."
We urge the administration to continue its dialogue
with UCC families and staff with an eye to exploring alternative
revenue streams that might support it. It would be a grave mistake
for this campus to eliminate childcare. We should be moving forward
towards progressive family-friendly policies, not backwards. Although
the closing of UCC might save the University up to $300,000 per
year, the substantive and symbolic costs of its loss would be
far higher.
We urge the administration to consider alternative
plans to reduce the budget. The current financial crisis must
not be resolved at the expense of women and children.
NANCY CAMPBELL PATTESON,
MICHELINE ASSELIN,
co-chairs
Faculty Senate Council
on the Status of Women
