By
Sheila Bapat
Misty Dillon is 23, a UA senior and a mother of 6-year-old twin boys.
Despite becoming a mother at age 16, she graduated high school on time with a 4.0 and has maintained the perfect GPA through college.
In fact, the only time she spent away from school was last semester. Divorce forced her to withdraw from the UA - only because there was not a day care facility on campus where she could keep her children while she was in class.
"I am a senior, I'm so close to getting my degree," Dillon said. "I had to withdraw because I had no help to care for my kids. If there were day care at the UA, I could have stayed in school."
Non-traditional students like Dillon essentially get the shaft from the UA, which repeatedly fails to provide basic services like day care facilities that could greatly assist them.
Many faculty and personnel have assisted and encouraged Dillon immensely. Honors College Dean Patricia MacCorqodale hand-wrote her a congratulations card when she won a scholarship. When Dillon began to consider leaving the UA last semester, a few of her professors even offered to let her bring her children to class.
Our administration, however, has has not made efforts to help students in her situation.
One could argue that right now, the university is focusing on helping undergraduates, particularly freshman. The current construction caters to traditional students and freshman - a group that also needs more university attention.
But the UA administration should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. It can work on projects for its undergraduates and at least begin projects to help its non-traditional students like Dillon.
Ironically, Dillon helped raise funds for the Integrated Learning Center, the future freshman's haven which is currently a huge pit in the ground. Dillon worked at the UA Annual Fund Foundation for nine months, during which time she personally raised $40,000 for the UA.
Too bad she couldn't have started her own fundraising campaign for a day-care facility.
"I know they can get the money [for a day care facility]," Dillon said. "This school kicks ass in many areas, so it gets funding for many areas. It's not like this is a tiny school that nobody is funding."
Even more frustrating is that so many options are available for beginning such a facility. Last year former ASUA President Cisco Aguilar took the issue by the horns and donated $2,500 out of his presidential budget to be allocated to a campus day care program. Aguilar also demanded that the UA administration allocate $25,000 to the project.
Despite ASUA's efforts, the project did not take off.
The UA does boast a meager child care subsidy program, which only helps about 53 students. As of last March, there were 500 people on the waiting list.
If it does not want to establish its own day care program, the UA could contract out to a local day care center to establish a facility on campus, just like it does for hot dogs.
Hot dogs are a staple of the UA campus. Whether or not its Dog Daze or Nathan's Hot Dogs, the UA makes sure that there is always some company here to push the meat sticks wrapped in bread onto the UA students.
Hot dogs are great. A day care facility would be even better.
Given how many times the UA administration has promised to take on the project, it is high time that the project actually get underway.
Especially because the campus as a whole would benefit from such a project.
"There are plenty of people on this campus, like education majors, who could work at a campus day care center," Dillon suggested. "And it would be just awesome for people with kids, too."
Despite losing an entire semester of college, Dillon still plans to graduate next year. She now has help from family to care for her children and works part-time at Raytheon. She hopes to pursue defense contract management.
"My biggest barrier to beginning my career is that I don't have I degree yet," she said.
Hopefully, this year, the UA will make an effort to ease this barrier.
