The Graduate Student Organization and the graduate student body vehemently disagree with the Editorial Board’s recent opinion on the new grad student child care grant. The Editorial Board suggests that the grant should not be funded by the employee fringe benefit pool, but instead come from the graduate student fee. Unfortunately, this suggestion does not take into account the complexities or realities of this program, which has the approval of the Board of Trustees and upper administration.

Graduate students desperately need child care assistance. The two on-campus child care centers have a total of 120 slots, far too few to support the students, faculty and staff at SU. Child care elsewhere in Syracuse is difficult to find and expensive. Upper administration and the GSO have found a partial solution in providing funding for a grant to offset a small portion of this cost. This program supports graduate student parents as they complete their degrees, ensuring they have a better chance of completing at all, and completing on time, both of which are key university priorities. This grant also supports the most financially vulnerable segment of the university community, one for which this university should stand in support of. In addition, the very need for this program is in part due to a failure by the university to provide additional child care options, both to students and employees. Thus, the university itself should bear the burden of funding this program, as it has committed to.

This program represents a moderate cost to the fringe benefit pool, but a cost too large to bear by the graduate student fee. In addition, this type of support is not appropriate for funding from a student fee. To say this should be funded from graduate student fees is equivalent to saying that a portion of the financial aid given to undergraduates should come from the undergraduate student fee, instead of “unfairly” coming from full-paying undergraduate and graduate students, a clearly repulsive conclusion.

We are a university, which should mean that we are all willing to support each other in our struggles and endeavors. We hope the Editorial Board will take this into account in future opinions.

Patrick Neary
GSO President