YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com
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“In politics evils should be remedied not revenged.”
CHARLES-LOUIS NAPOLÉON BONAPARTE
PRINCE-PRESIDENT OF THE SECOND FRENCH REPUBLIC
Employees criticize Yale’s childcare policies
YALE NEWS
Some Yale affiliates have access to childcare-related benefits through the University. BY MADISON HAHAMY STAFF REPORTER On Feb. 3, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Tamar Gendler wrote an email to faculty letting them know that recent efforts to convert Rosenfeld Hall into a childcare center for school-age children fell through due to the building’s conversion into a vaccination site. “We extensively surveyed additional campus spaces and none meet the regulatory requirements for operating a childcare facility,” Gendler said. The news came as a disappointment to many faculty members who were already stretched thin by the demands of working from home with their children’s constant presence. For them, trying to find a consistent and affordable option for childcare proved difficult as well — especially since many facilities have closed due to the pandemic. Rosenfeld Hall would have been the only school-aged childcare center on Yale’s campus. Without it, some faculty now find themselves in the same position they have been in for many months — an unsustainable arrangement that could have lasting ramifications on gender inequity in the workplace. “I am facing never-ending laundry, dishes and cleaning, combined with the pressures of acting like a grade-school teacher and IT professional (none of which I am qualified for) combined with my full-time job
and my desire to do that well,” Stacey Bonet, senior administrative assistant at the Yale School of Public Health, wrote in an email to the News. “Since the disadvantage women face in the workplace is cyclical, pandemic losses could result in generations of further disadvantage for women at work.” On Dec. 1, members of Yale’s Childcare Consultative Committee presented a brief to University President Peter Salovey and other administrative officials detailing their issues with Yale’s current childcare plans and offering specific policy adjustments, which they also detailed in a December op-ed for the News. The YCCC members suggested policies including 90 paid time off “COVID Days” for the spring semester, affordable and convenient childcare options provided by the University, childcare stipends for postdoctoral parents and more. They also advocated for more centralized flexibility guidelines for academic departments that cover work hours and teaching arrangements. Currently, those departments operate under a policy of individual discretion as to what accommodations they would provide. The Committee is not an official group under the Provost’s office — although the YCCC has demanded that it become one, and a resolution asking for such a committee to be formed recently passed at an FAS Senate meeting. Instead, the YCCC is a coalition formed from representatives of the Women Fac-
ulty Forum, FAS Senate, Committee on the Status of Women in Medicine, Working Women’s Network, Yale postdoctoral associations and UNITE HERE Local 34, which is the union for clerical and technical workers at Yale. According to professor of history Naomi Rogers, the administration’s primary response to these complaints has been organizing regularly scheduled meetings with a senior provost official. Rene Almeling, associate professor of sociology, spoke positively of administrative response to childcare issues, both in general and in specific response to the YCCC brief. “The YCCC committee is appreciative of the efforts being made by the Yale administration, especially the Provost and FAS Dean Tamar Gendler, to address pandemic-related childcare issues. If this was an easy problem to solve, it would be solved by now,” she said. But even so, Almeling and other faculty do not believe these steps are enough. For one, Yale lowered the number of Crisis Care days from 25 for the period between June and December 2020 to just 20 for the spring term. Crisis Care days give employees access to emergency backup care, which includes Bright Horizons Daycare located on West Campus or $100 reimbursements for care they secure within their personal network. “Neither 20 nor 25 days will be enough to help parents with childcare for 6 months,” Krishna
Mudumbi, a postdoctoral associate, wrote in an email to the News. Furthermore, Bonet noted that the benefits don’t account for scenarios in which group care or babysitting is not a safe option, such as if someone in the family has been exposed to COVID-19. And the process of arranging most childcare centers or babysitting options requires an amount of time and energy that may not be feasible for working parents, Bonet added. “I cannot help but wonder how many community members have not completed this process due to time or access?” Bonet wrote to the News. “It is a complicated process, and it is time-consuming.” Childcare benefits also vary according to parents’ jobs. Postdoctoral parents, who are some of the most junior academic staff at Yale, do not receive the same stipends to offset the cost of childcare that graduate students and medical students do. Postdoctoral fellow Chrystal Starbird told the News that she appreciated the efforts of the University to respond to the different YCCC requests, but that the postdoctoral population is still largely neglected. “There is very little response to requests that address the needs of postdocs,” Starbird said. “It’s important for [Yale] to really consider the postdoc population, which is a vital part of Yale’s operations.” Mudumbi acknowledged that Yale has made strides in the right direction, such as including postdoctoral fellows and associates in current childcare policies. But Mudumbi told the News that postdocs currently do not have guarantees of contractual extensions, while Yale has offered to extend the tenure clock for those on tenure track. University Provost Scott Strobel noted in an email to the News that Yale has spent over $4.1 million on expanding the back-up care accommodations for “benefits-eligible faculty, managerial and professional staff, post-doctoral fellows, post-doctoral associates, clerical and technical, and service and maintenance employees, and students of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.” “We are pleased that the emergency back-up care program has been successful and widely used by the students, faculty and staff across the university,” Strobel added. Strobel declined to comment on contractual extensions for postdocs, but did confirm to the News that ladder faculty received a oneyear appointment extension.
In an email to the News, Gendler pointed to adjusted teaching policies for the 2020-2021 academic year. Gendler noted that faculty can co-teach or teach two sections of the same course to reduce their course preparation load, and that deans and faculty can work together to come up with a teaching plan that accommodates their childcare needs. “We are eager to continue working with colleagues within the FAS and across the University on this extremely important issue,” Gendler said. But for some faculty, childcare issues have existed far prior to pandemic times. Nina Stachenfeld, Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of Medicine, called childcare an “ongoing challenge” that only now is more “apparent and immediate.” Rogers noted that the pandemic exposed the tenuous ways in which families “cobbled together a working way to work at Yale.” But, while it is not new, the gender inequities exacerbated due to the pandemic are especially worrisome. “My primary concern if things are not rectified is that women at [the Yale School of Medicine] will lose progress and momentum in their professional lives because so much of the child and family falls especially hard upon them,” Stachenfeld said. Starbird added that inequities in science in both “gender and minority participation” could broaden. She cited studies indicating that, during the pandemic, women and faculty with fewer resources have published fewer papers and submitted fewer grants — meaning that, in the future, those same people will be less competitive for grants and jobs. Almeling, who in her sociological research specializes in gender, noted her concerns about “the long-term effects of pandemic-related caregiving burdens, which studies show has fallen mostly on women.” She pointed to junior faculty who have had to interrupt research due to childcare needs struggling to get tenure in the future. She also mentioned postdocs who don’t receive adequate childcare benefits and have trouble acquiring a job. “Unless Yale takes action to address the gendered inequities of the pandemic, we will be living with the effects for decades to come,” Almeling wrote in an email to the News. Rosenfeld Hall is located at 109 Grove St. Contact MADISON HAHAMY at madison.hahamy@yale.edu .
Yale College students enter Phase 3 of arrival quarantine BY SEAN PERGOLA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER After two long weeks quarantined in their residential colleges, on-campus Yale students were abuzz on Monday as they rediscovered the campus they’d been waiting to roam. As of Feb. 15 at 7:00 a.m., Yale has entered Phase 3 of arrival quarantine procedure. Undergraduate students are now permitted to move freely around campus, as well as invite on-campus guests into their suites. Traveling to the surrounding city and hosting off-campus students in their dorms remain forbidden. Despite the increased level of COVID19 risk due to the more lenient restrictions, many students remained enthusiastic about exploring campus once again. “Stepping out of the gate for the first time onto Cross Campus, it was just a wave of nostalgia, and I was like ‘Oh my God, this is why I came back,’” Tyler Brown ’23 commented. “It was so good to see campus, and it was so good to see life happening … When I’m in my room, with the two walks I take every day to the dining hall, I don’t see anyone. It was so good to just see other people, and feel like I’m not in Grace Hopper looking at the world through a window, and I’m actually in New Haven, part of Yale, part of the city.” The return to campus holds extra significance for sophomores, who, for the most part, have not been able to return to campus since
being sent home last March. Brown remarked that this exodus did not feel like it ended until Phase 3 started, when he was finally able to move out of the “little rectangle of [his] existence.” First-year students who were granted a housing exception shared some of this excitement. Their enthusiasm was somewhat dampened by a familiarity of lifted restrictions or perhaps a more immediate familiarity with Yale’s campus. “It’s definitely different,” Abby Davis ’24 commented. “It was the second time around [for first years], so everything was a bit less exciting.” She quickly added, “Hopefully people will be less likely to go do crazy things on the first day this time.” Regardless of these nuances, students from all classes shared a common interest in returning to popular campus destinations. Hillhouse Avenue, Sterling Memorial Library and a smattering of residential colleges were all frequent features in Yalies’ short lists of on-campus destinations, according to the seven students the News spoke with. But local restaurants, grocery stores and off-campus apartments were also included in some students’ lists. Traveling to these off-campus locations is not permitted during Phase 3 of the arrival quarantine. Some students have accordingly expressed worries about adherence to quarantine guidelines. With no mechanism in place to monitor students traveling off campus,
students must follow restrictions on an essentially voluntary basis. “As long as everyone is diligent with themselves and tries to do the right thing, it should be okay,” Meg Dreany ’24 affirmed. “It starts to get out of hand when people kind of lose the respect for their community and their suitemates … you shouldn’t want to do anything that will put them in danger.”
Brown echoed these concerns, remarking that contact with New Haven seems inevitable. Even when following every precaution, any exposure to someone who had ventured into New Haven would cause contact levels to “skyrocket,” he said. Regardless, Brown did not contend that students should remain restricted to their residential col-
leges. He instead emphasized that the guidelines in Phase 3 will be effective, so long as students adhere to them. Phase 3 is currently slated to end March 1 at 7:00 a.m., when students will be permitted to travel off campus. Contact SEAN PERGOLA at sean.pergola@yale.edu .
KAREN LIN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
In Phase 3, students can travel around campus and enter certain University buildings.
