By Saron Gebereegziabhier
Trinity Times Correspondent

A student-parent’s day rarely separates neatly into categories like “school” and “home.” Studying happens alongside snack time. A class discussion competes with pickup schedules. Even when a student-parent is fully present, their life is often built around a reality the college timetable wasn’t designed for.

For student parents at Trinity Washington University, the dream of having on-campus childcare is not currently on the table. Instead, they have had to find resourceful alternatives, even as they know the university once operated a daycare center in the 1990s that ultimately could not be sustained.

At Trinity, two initiatives are helping bring that reality into clearer focus: the Family Library and the Student Parent Alliance (SPA). Together, they represent a growing system of support rooted in a simple idea – student-parents should not have to hide that they are raising children while pursuing a degree.

“The Family Library is a space meant to support student parents and their studying needs,” said Karen Gerlach, vice president for student affairs at Trinity Washington University. It’s built for the overlap between academic and family life, “a tool which enables student parents to study, build community, and enjoy family time,” she said.

That intention shows up in the way the space is described: “Accompanying children ages 0-12 can read, play, and create while their student parent gets to study, group meet, or just take a moment to play with their child,” Gerlach said. The room also acts as a connection point for academic services. “The Family Library is also a hub to provide assistance to student parents, coordinate with specialized services, such as tutoring, or assist with any of the many services offered by the library,” she added.

But even as the Family Library offers what many student-parents need immediately – space, flexibility and belonging – one question still hovers over nearly every student-parent conversation: what about childcare?

Long before the Family Library existed, Trinity operated an on-campus daycare – one that carries lessons about why childcare is so difficult to sustain.

“It began in the fall of 1993,” said Deborah Harris-O’Brien, a professor of psychology at Trinity Washington University. Before the daycare existed, faculty were able to bring children to campus and arrange babysitting with students while they taught. That changed abruptly.

“In 1993, the babysitting by students practice was banned,” Harris-O’Brien said. “The rationale was that the dorms and other campus buildings were not set up to safely accommodate young children, which could lead to accidents and lawsuits, and that faculty having students in their classes and caring for their children was a dual relationship that could lead to a perception of favoritism.”

Out of that shift, Trinity moved to create a licensed childcare center, one that could meet real needs while complying with strict D.C. requirements. “To be licensed in the District (of Columbia), we needed a director with at least a master’s degree,” Harris-O’Brien said. “Because I had young children and a graduate degree in clinical child/developmental psychology, I agreed to serve as the first director.”

The center was set up in a location familiar to many on campus, the basement of Cuvilly Hall, along with an outdoor playground and staffing to meet licensing expectations. Harris-O’Brien recalled the work of launching it: “During the summer of 1993, we physically set up the center, hired a full-time teacher, and applied for (and received) our license.”

The daycare center was intended to serve faculty and staff but expanded to include student-parents as planning continued.

“The original goal was to meet the needs of faculty and staff, but as the planning progressed, it was decided to make it available to students on a drop-in basis, on Saturdays and evenings,” Harris-O’Brien said.

At the time, most student-parents weren’t traditional weekday undergraduates. “Most of our student parents were older, part-time students in what was called ‘Weekend College’ (now the School of Professional and Graduate Studies),” Harris-O’Brien said.

The model worked because it matched their schedule and needs, she said. “The part-time students in ‘Weekend College’ were very happy to have a center that accepted their children on a limited basis.”

Rebecca Easby, an associate professor of art history at Trinity Washington University, credited the daycare with allowing her to focus on her work without the weight of persistent anxiety.

“Having my (daughter) on campus worked well for me,” Easby said. “If there was a problem, it meant that I didn’t have to race home.” She emphasized how significant that was in a different era of communication, “as this was before cell phones came into everyday use, this was a big plus.”

Some memories capture the spirit of a campus that briefly made room for families.

“There was an elderly, retired nun/professor on campus who studied turtles,” Easby said. “They used to take the children to visit her turtle pond. My daughter used to love going to visit the turtles. It was the highlight of her week.”

But even in Easby’s account, the reality behind the scenes was clear that it took constant effort to keep the system running.

“As I remember it, there were challenges with getting the daycare up and running, largely due to the very rigid regulations applied to daycare in the District,” she said. “Quite a few students worked there, and it was quite a jigsaw puzzle to put together a staff schedule.”

The daycare did not last, and its ending was tied to sustainability, who used it, who paid for it and what it cost to operate.

“The center pivoted from being a drop-in type of facility to being a full-time weekday preschool,” Harris-O’Brien said. “This included charging higher fees.”

As costs rose and the model changed, participation shifted. “Many faculty did not want to bring their children on days they were not teaching and left the center,” she said.

“The fees paid by the faculty had been a large part of the funding, and there were not enough staff using the center on weekdays to sustain the center,” Harris-O’Brien said. And for student-parents, the same pressure was applied, and “the increased fees required to sustain the center became too high for students.”

Looking back, she draws a line between the daycare’s original audience and today’s needs.

“Keep in mind, the center was not established for full-time weekday students,” Harris-O’Brien said. “If Trinity had a daycare on campus now, the primary population might be young children of CAS (College of Arts and Sciences) students.”

She also raised the question that continues to shape feasibility, adding that “without a core population of children utilizing it on a full-time basis, it may not be financially feasible.”

In response to these ongoing questions of feasibility, Trinity leadership points to a specific set of regulatory and operational roadblocks.

“The main barriers to operating a childcare facility on a college campus in D.C. are the licensing and qualification requirements, the high operational costs, limited suitable physical space, as well as the logistical challenges of academic schedules with child care needs,” Gerlach said. She added that “operating a childcare facility on campus is not something that Trinity is pursuing at this time.”

The Family Library and SPA (Student Parent Alliance) don’t erase the childcare gap, but they do something important. They acknowledge the lived reality of student parenting and create a place where support can be coordinated, shared and made visible.

“Trinity staff, along with a student parent fellow, engaged in a two-year working group called Family U,” Gerlach said in describing the broader initiative behind the current shift. The outcomes included “revised policies, the establishment of the Student Parent Alliance,” and “the establishment of the Family Library space.”

And that is the core story. Student parents are still navigating the most expensive and complicated need – childcare – in a city where it is hard to sustain. But they are no longer doing it invisibly. The Family Library makes student parenthood present on campus. The SPA makes it collective.

Because when support isn’t built in, student-parents build it themselves – one study session, one shared resource and one community space at a time.