The Tufts Alliance for the Advancement of Mothers (TAAM) began circulating a petition earlier this month requesting on-campus housing in which Tufts students who are mothers can live with their children.
Currently, the Office of Residential Life and Learning (ORLL) does provide some off-campus housing for graduate students and faculty members with families. Though ORLL promises on-campus housing to all undergraduate freshmen and sophomores, because children are not permitted to live in the dormitories, student mothers cannot live on-campus with their children.
"We are not asking for free housing, just the same equal access that is provided to all students regardless of gender, sexual orientation, religion, creed or disability," mother and TAAM founder Anne Stevenson (LA '06) said.
Central to the request of the group is the feeling that it is impossible to effectively participate in student life if they live too far away from campus. "If you're not on campus, you can't really participate as a student," Stevenson said at a TAAM meeting.
Beyond that, transportation and long commutes are an issue, according to Interim Director of the Women's Center Susan Gilbert.
"Transportation is one of the biggest challenges. Many of the mothers are living at home, and therefore must commute to school. That takes a lot of time," she said.
Senior Yissy Perez, also a mother, said that members of the administration were initially supportive when mothers came to them last year to talk about housing, but then seemed to imply that granting their requests would tarnish Tufts' reputation.
"They didn't want 'that' image," she said. "[They] didn't want to portray Tufts as a community college."
Stevenson said that the biggest obstacle has not been whether or not resources are available, but whether the administration wants to allocate those resources for specialty housing.
Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman disagreed, saying that appropriate houses may not be available on campus. "There are a lot of regulatory issues about whether or not particular places are safe environments for toddlers," he said.
"You can imagine that a lot of our [on-campus buildings] have stairways with no protection for the stairs and no protection for the space between two parallel stairs," Reitman said. "Doorways, elevators - there are all sorts of issues." Many houses also have lead paint, which makes them unsafe for toddlers, he said.
Perceptions of Tufts' image, he said, have nothing to do with the administration's stance. "I think that it should be the university's interest to provide any help we can," he said. "There's nothing image-related or political."
He also said that he has no recollection of a meeting at which a group of mothers requested housing. "There was not a group that was saying we want to go for housing. No group has come to me to ask that," he said. "I don't know if there was a desire for that or not."
Instead, he said that he remembers a request for support, which he said the administration has provided.
"There are a number of things that we have done to help, including providing access to legal advice," he said.
"[We have used] Tufts networks that were identified through legal counsel or the vice president's office to hook [mothers] up with resources that could provide advice on financial issues or other legal issues," he said.
Stevenson does not agree that the administration has done enough, saying that student mothers suffer from a stigma on campus. "We're invisible. It's as if we don't even exist," she said at a TAAM meeting.
Griselmarie Alemar, also a mother, echoed these sentiments in an interview. "Tufts likes to portray the image that they like to help the community," she said. "[But] we are part of the community, and they don't really help us." Alemar will be returning from medical leave in the fall.
Gilbert and Violence Prevention Program Coordinator Elaine Theodore said that they understand the situation that student mothers face.
"I'm not sure students [who are not mothers] would recognize the difficulty of having a young child in addition to the same academic pressures," Gilbert said. Student moms "deserve equal respect and equal treatment, whether in housing or elsewhere."
Theodore mentioned the transparency of mothers at Tufts. "There is [a perception] that this demographic doesn't exist at Tufts," she said. Student mothers "are really seen in a different light. They are treated differently by other students and by the administration. The biggest difference is that they don't get housing."
Stevenson said that they are almost alone on campus in this respect. "There is the Crafts House, [La Casa], the [Capen] House, the International House. There is a niche for everyone. They have forgotten us, or they've pushed us aside," she said.
Reitman said that if student moms want their own on-campus house, they need to apply for a special interest house, something he said he is not sure if they have done already.
"The next step is going to be to talk about a new special interest house," he said.
"Do we have an appropriate space? I don't know. Could we address the safety issues? Potentially, yes. But [the] last [time] I knew we were talking about doing this, there was no group [of students] that was looking to do that."
But it is exactly those types of houses that Stevenson is using as a justification.
