The Provost’s office plans to schedule a meeting between AU officials and faculty members to address childcare and breast-feeding on campus, according to a Sept. 24 letter from the provost and dean of academic affairs.
The meeting will include Dean of Academic Affairs Phyllis Peres, Faculty Senate Chair Barlow Burke and a representative group of co-signers on a faculty letter sent to Peres and Provost Scott Bass Sept. 19. Bass said the Faculty Senate, Human Resources and the Office of General Counsel will also be involved in answering the faculty’s questions of work-life balance.
Sixty faculty members from all five schools within the University wrote that they hope to implement policies to create a supportive environment for employees and their loved ones.
In the Sept. 19 letter, faculty said they were concerned about AU’s public response to Adrienne Pine, an assistant professor of anthropology who breast-fed her sick child during her “Sex, Gender and Culture” course Aug. 28.
The University received national media attention after Pine published an online essay with her views on the breast-feeding.
Faculty members said they are troubled by an AU press statement characterizing Pine’s behavior as “unprofessional,” and that the University incorrectly implied that it provides adequate support for women in terms of sick leave, break times and private areas for nursing.
The private areas AU spokeswoman Camille Lepre refers to are bathrooms, offices and cars rather than designated nursing rooms, the faculty letter said.
“We have begun a process of discussing these issues so that we will come to a common understanding about what the university currently offers, what is required by law, and what more we might do as an institution,” Lepre said in an email to The Eagle.
Lepre said the space provided cannot be a bathroom and can include the faculty member’s office if they have one, The Eagle previously reported.
According to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, employers are required to give nursing women break time in a private area to “express breast milk” until the child is 12 months old.
D.C. law also states that women have the right to breast-feed in any public or private location where they have the right to be with a child.
The Sept. 19 letter also called for AU to provide emergency or infant childcare in addition to services offered by the AU Child Development Center, which admits children ages 2 ½ to 6.
However, the faculty letter said the University needs more flexible practices to accommodate a work life that does not operate around a standard, 40-hour workweek.
“While the university allows faculty to cancel class to attend to ill children, parents, or other emergencies, vulnerable untenured, term and adjunct faculty may feel they risk their job to take such leave,” the Sept. 19 letter said.
Bass and Peres said that though the letter was sent in reaction to a specific incident, individual personnel matters are confidential and will not be open for discussion at the meeting.
rkaras@theeagleonline.com
