Law Students Rally To Help Classmates With Child Care

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: CUNY Law Advocates for Students with Kids
February 26, 2008

LAW STUDENTS RALLY TO HELP CLASSMATES WITH CHILD CARE

What does a law student do with her child when her baby sitter quits in the middle of the semester? At CUNY School of Law, the student can put a child in the school-subsidized daycare center—but only if the child is 2.3 years or older. For those students with infants, or who are expecting a child soon, the center turns a cold shoulder.

CUNY School of Law’s daycare arrangement has come under fire from the student group Advocates for Students with Kids (A.S.K.). “Although CUNY is a pioneer among law schools for having a child care center, it is ineffective for many of CUNY’s current students,” Melissa Pantazopoulos, founding member of A.S.K. and parent of 13-month-old Alexander, said. Pantazopoulos explained that students whose children are over the age of 2.3 years pay a mere $14 a day at the CUNY center. For parents of younger children, the average cost of child care in the area is $50 to $80 a day.

This inequitable setup has left one student, Farah Diaz-Tello, and her 7-month-old son, Julian, scrambling to find some sort of affordable daycare. Her only option right now is to recruit other law students to take shifts watching Julian in a professor’s office.

“I had a perfectly balanced arrangement with a sitter, and then the floor fell out from under me. All the daycare centers I called had waiting lists of 6 months to a year, and all the daytime babysitters were charging $12-14 an hour,” Diaz-Tello said.

Last week, in a vote of solidarity, the Student Government passed a bill stating that their office would be used as an infant care room, with students as the caretakers. Now, rather than miss class if their daycare falls through, other student parents are thinking of bringing their younger children. Sadly, there are few because of the high rate of attrition of student parents. Nearly everyone in A.S.K. knows of someone who had to withdraw or defer enrollment due to lack of child care.

Finding infant care is one of the most difficult challenges a new parent in New York City’s notoriously difficult childcare market has to tackle. Most centers will not take newborns, and the ones that do, charge handsomely. “The school acknowledges that high student debt keeps people from practicing in the public interest,” said Diaz-Tello, “and yet we’re expected to either take out thousands and thousands of dollars in extra debt for daycare outside the school, or withdraw and work an entry-level job that will probably barely cover child care and rent for 2.3 years. It doesn’t make sense.”

The students of A.S.K. see their efforts to institute child care as larger than any one student’s personal emergency, but rather as a part of a larger societal dialogue on the place of parents outside the home. Morgan Cashwell, a non-parent member, summarized the group’s position, saying, “If we as a community truly believe in the right to equal access, the right to choose how to exercise our reproductive rights, and the right to not have to choose between family or career, we must push for comprehensive child care for children of all ages.”

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Student Govt. Passes Civil Disobedience Act over Campus Childcare

An Act Concerning Temporary Use of the CUNY Law Student Government Office for Infant Care. Passed in CUNY Law Student Government on 2/21/08 by a vote of 18-3-0.

Read this doc on Scribd: An Act Concerning Temporary Use of the CUNY Law Student Government Office for Infant Care

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About to Have a Baby? See You in 2.3 Years!

The first time I ever asked about the possibility of infant care at CUNY at a Dean’s Coffee, Dean Anderson cut me off before I could even finish my question. “Let’s stop for a moment,” she said, “and acknowledge the fact that CUNY is a very special place for having a daycare center at all. This doesn’t exist at most law schools; it didn’t exist at Villanova.”

Lucky for us, we’re not at Villanova. We’re at CUNY, which has boasted on-campus childcare since its days at PS 36 thanks to the efforts of inaugural class alumna Hon. Diccia Pineda-Kirwan, founding faculty members Dinesh Khosla and Rhonda Copelon, and many other dedicated individuals.

In its current iteration, the day care center at CUNY Law only accepts children 2.3 years old and over (for those scratching their heads about the math, that’s 2 years 3 months, not two and one-third years). What this means for current students is that there is mathematically no way that a student who becomes pregnant while at CUNY Law School will be able to use the day care center unless she leaves school. (While a maternity leave sounds like fun, it leaves the student with all of the same financial responsibilities, but no student loans with which to meet them; ergo, she still has to find childcare so she can work to pay rent.) I became pregnant before we even got to mens rea in first semester criminal law. My son was born in June of 2007, and will therefore be 23 months old when I walk the stage – 4 months shy of day care age. There is no way that any student who becomes pregnant while at law school will be able to take advantage of the $14 per day tuition. Rather, they will be forced to enter the notoriously difficult NYC day care market. Few childcare centers offer infant care – the single available daycare near the school has a waiting list of at least 6 months, at a cost of $990 a month (about three times the CUNY cost) with a deposit of $1090. Over the course of the six semesters, that would incur $26,700 in extra debt for the student. Those who can’t wait six months –like me when my babysitter quit suddenly with no notice— can find a daytime babysitter for between $50 and $80 per day at the very low end. If you think even $50 is a lot to pay, divide that by 8 hours per day and consider whether you’d accept that amount to watch someone’s baby. In short, even if the day care center charged students with infants double what they charge parents with children over 2.3, it would still be far less expensive and far more convenient than the next available option. As for my sudden loss of daycare, my son is on the waiting list at the nearby daycare center mentioned above, and I’m hoping that a spot will open up in time for my summer internship.

During that early Dean’s Coffee, only a few keen-eyed observers could tell I was pregnant, and I like to think that I hid the absolute terror I was facing even better. And who wouldn’t be scared? Two of my 1L colleagues had delivered babies the previous semester: one hadn’t returned and the other was forced to send her tiny son halfway across the country to live with her parents. A 2L that people pointed me toward for advice had been forced to withdraw for want of childcare; she simply vanished and a lot of people hadn’t even noticed she was gone. I was dealing with this constant, grinding anxiety, and only a couple of people knew about it. What nobody could tell was that the Dean herself was pregnant. A lot of people, faculty and students alike, have wondered whether the Dean’s pregnancy has made her more empathetic toward the struggles that we face as student parents. I can’t say for sure. What I can say is that my mother doesn’t come to school to take care of my baby so I can nurse him on demand, because I left her and the rest of my family and friends back in Texas when I moved to godforsaken Flushing to come to school. I don’t have a staff that will play with my baby while I’m in meetings. And I’m willing to bet that any outside childcare that the Dean does eventually get for her daughter won’t be financed with student loans. I’m sure she has spent as many sleepless nights with a crying baby as I have, but she won’t get kicked out of CUNY if her GPA drops below 2.3.

You might be thinking to yourself, “sure, it sucks for you, but I bet there’s some reason. Maybe liability or licensing or something?” My answer is always the same: we’re a building full of lawyers, we can figure out liability. If we can’t, we sure have a problem, because 4 other CUNY campuses have figured out how to provide infant care, some of which accept children as young as 4 months old. And, truth be told, the Law School knows exactly what it would take to have infant care on campus because, thanks to the efforts of student activism and Dean Bilek, they hired consultants to figure it out. Despite the consultants’ expertise, however, Dean Shih set the final price tag, sandbagging the proposal with $193,000 in extra “projected costs,” many of which had already been accounted for by the consultants' report.

And here’s the real kicker. Every single time the issue comes up, the administration reminds us that the current day care center is running at a deficit. How terrible! In fact, the daycare center has a capacity of 16 children, and only currently serves 6. And yet the university fails to see the obvious solution – if they were to make the rather minimal accommodations that it would take to include infants, they could serve another 6 children, bringing the center closer to capacity than it has ever been. Or, perhaps if the school is in such dire financial straits that this it simply can’t afford to provide a service that will help with recruiting and retaining students with young children, the administration might do well to reconsider superfluous purchases like the SMART boards in every classroom, which retail for about $5,300 apiece, or $8,525 annually in AALS dues (to say nothing of the $20,000 application fee).

While Dean Anderson once mockingly quipped that having infant care available on campus might encourage people to have children during law school, there is no questioning the fact that women in law school are generally at an age of peak fertility: there were 8 babies born to CUNY Law students last year, not counting the 5 that were still in utero at the end of the Spring term. Whether or not the school officially supports childbearing during law school, faculty advisors and other women lawyers widely recognize that law school is actually an optimal time to have a child… with adequate support, of course.

The lack of comprehensive childcare at CUNY Law serves to further penalize those students who choose to undertake the simultaneous challenges of parenthood and law school, replicating the inequities in the workplace that students come here to learn to battle. Maybe it’s to drive us out because we’re a threat to the bar pass rate. Until the law school expands its childcare center to accept children from infancy through kindergarten age, I have no evidence to the contrary.

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Stay tuned . . .

STAY TUNED for upcoming posts including:

1. Academic Standing Policy 2007 Survey Results, Students-4-Students

2. So You're About to Have a Baby? See You in 2.3 Years. -- Current state of Childcare at CUNY Law

3. Updates on CUNY Law's possible move to Long Island City

4. Disability Exam Accommodations: Get tested early and often

5. In Search of a Fair Academic Appeals Process: Current State of the Academic Standing Committee

6. Student Group Updates including events

7. Students' Guide to FOILing CUNY: Tips for getting information from CUNY Law even when they don't want you to have it

8. An Ode to the Old Forum and Calendar -- R.I.P.

9. Beginning a New Era: Changes Occurring Within the Clinics

If anyone or any group would like to volunteer to write one of these posts or if you or your group has an idea for or wants to post something else, please email cunylawblog@gmail.com. Student group presidents or leaders also have access to post on the CUNY Law Blog. If you are a student group leader and you aren't able to post on the blog, email cunylawblog@gmail.com. Anyone may comment on a post.

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CUNY Law Kicks Coca-Cola Off Campus

Several of you may have noticed, in your breaks between classes, that there is not Coca-Cola on sale in the vending machines at CUNY Law. Margie, likewise, carries exclusively Pepsi products. In case anyone new to the CUNY community has been wondering why this is the case, I thought I'd say a few words in the interest of a more informed citizenry.

A couple of years ago, several CUNY Law students, through the Labor Coalition, began asking the Law School to join an international boycott against Coca-Cola that has been called by a labor union in Colombia, SINALTRAINAL. The workers in Colombia, who bottle Coke products, have been organizing and trying to bargain with Coca-Cola for years. As often happens in Colombia when workers stand up for their rights, their demands were met with violence.

Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world to be a union activist. Since 1986, over 4,000 trade unionists have been assassinated, tortured, kidnapped, and otherwise terrorized by paramilitary groups. These groups are tied in with the Colombian government and military (which is trained and supported by the United States, through the School of the Americas), and many of them are supported by the companies whose dirty work they perform. Over the years, several SINALTRAINAL members and officers have been murdered by various paramilitary groups. In one case, an activist was killed inside the gates of the Coke plant itself. In another incident, several Coke employees were rounded up, at gunpoint, while at work, and forced to sign resignations from the union on company letterhead.

SINALTRAINAL responded to this by calling on the international community to boycott Coca-Cola. In addition, they filed a lawsuit under the Alien Tort Claims Act, which allows citizens of other countries to sue U.S. corporations for tortious acts committed abroad. The case against Coke was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, but the boycott and international pressure campaign continues.

SINALTRAINAL and its U.S. allies have paid particular attention to students and universities. Universities do a huge volume of business with Coke, and as respected institutions, they have a voice even larger than their financial clout. Students at dozens of U.S. campuses have put pressure on their administrations to formally divest themselves from Coke, and many have been successful. Coke has taken this effort very seriously, and has opposed these boycotts with everything they've got.

Luckily, at CUNY, things weren't so tough. The LSA held hearings on the Coke question, and although there was some debate on the issue, the Law School decided that given our mission of Law in the Service of Human Needs, it was important for our community to support international human rights and stand in solidarity with the workers in Colombia.

Now, not everyone agrees with me on this part, but my personal feeling is that, if you choose as an individual to drink Coke, or any of their products, you're not a bad person. Your personal decision and the (maybe) 300 or so cans of Coke that you drink over the course of a year are chump change to their bottom line. It's not like you're crossing a picket line, except in a symbolic sense. Institutions, on the other hand, are a different story. If you walk by the Labor Coalition bulletin board in the hallway, you'll see an article in a local paper announcing that CUNY Law was kicking Coke off its campus. That's a big deal. It's bad PR for Coca Cola, which they fear more than anything else. It has a huge impact when a law school signs on to a campaign accusing a major corporation like Coke of illegal conduct. And it's made a difference. In the last year or so, Coke has finally come to the table and started negotiating with SINALTRAINAL. While the fight isn't over, and attacks against union members continue, there has been some progress.

This is the time to push forward with the pressure on Coke, and the Labor Coalition has been helping students at other CUNY campuses to initiate anti-Coke campaigns too. It's going to be an uphill battle, but we're hopeful.

I hope this was informative, and answered some questions. If anyone's interested in reading more about Coke's crimes around the world, you can visit http://www.killercoke.org, http://www.corpwatch.org, or any number of other corporate responsibility-oriented websites.

In Solidarity,

CUNY Law Labor Coalition
October 31, 2007

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A little legislative history about the CUNY Law Labor Coalition's movement to ban Coca-Cola products on campus:

In 2005-2006, the Labor Coalition began campaigning to ban Coca-Cola from CUNY campuses for, among other reasons, human rights abuses in Columbia. During that time, the Labor Coalition began passing around a petition seeking support from the CUNY Law community to kick Coke off campus. Over 200 people signed the petition including students, faculty, administrators and staff. See the signed petitions and supporting documents below.

In late Spring 2006, the Labor Coalition introduced a resolution in Student Government (SG) to ask the Law Student Association (LSA), on behalf of the student body, to stop the sale of Coke products on campus and to stop the use of student funds to purchase Coke products at events. After much debate in Student Government, the resolution passed overwhelmingly (maybe unanimously). See the SG resolution that was passed below.

Subsequently, in late spring 2006, the Labor Coalition brought a similar resolution to the CUNY Law, Law School Association (LSA). The LSA meeting was attended by approximately 15 people representing both sides of the issue and this resolution was also overwhelmingly approved (although not unanimously). See the LSA resolution that was passed below.

Also below are two emails sent to all CUNY Law students, faculty, administration and staff. The first is from a Labor Coalition representative explaining the movement to ban coke and advertising the SG and LSA meetings that were to take place. The second is from Student Government President Joel Serrano explaining the movement to ban coke and advertising the SG and LSA meetings that were to take place.

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