Eighteen days following the fatal building collapse at University Village, Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin announced that the University Village apartments and the Student Parent Center will be closing by June 30, with a plan in place to have the entire complex demolished shortly thereafter.
The plan to close the day care was discussed with parents in a private meeting that lasted approximately 30 minutes Wednesday led by several university leaders including Heath Immel, Associate Director of the Missouri Student Unions, and Jeffrey Zeilenga, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs.
MU spokesman Christian Basi said the current location required renovation that were too costly to keep the center there. There is no plan in place to move the center to a new location but he did not rule out the possibility. Factors such as space and costs contribute to the lack of an immediate backup plan other than what has been announced.
“That’s part of the future discussions,” he said. “Chancellor Loftin is going to be asking many different groups on campus to look into the issue and see if there is a solution.”
Basi said the groups MU plans to consult with include the Missouri Students Association, Graduate Professional Council, Faculty Council, Staff Advisory Council and Family Friendly Campus, among others.
“Going forward, I will ask representatives from student, faculty and staff groups to consider the feasibility of continuing to offer child care on campus for the children of students, faculty and staff,” Loftin said in a university news release.
The Student Parent Center has been in existence since 1974 after originally being funded by student fees to accommodate students who are parents. Since then, the university has used additional student fee funds to subsidize the operations of the center. Now, it seems, those funds will be headed in other directions.
Basi said these unused funds would now be put towards deferred maintenance projects that before could not be addressed along with other academic priorities.
MU plans to offer help to families who are now without care providers.
“We will provide assistance to any students who are looking for alternative housing, as well as provide resources to those parents searching for child care,” Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Cathy Scroggs said in the same news release.
Basi said the matter of what will happen to current day care employees is a “personnel decision.”
Basi did not link the timing of the meeting with day care parents to the recent upstart of a petition to move the center.
“We wanted to have this meeting tonight to let parents and also University Village residents know what the decision ended up being,” he said.
Basi said that further conversations about the future of the center would be had very soon and before the time of demolition.
“We have been moving as fast as we can,” he said. “Our first priority was for the residents who were immediately displaced and that took several days. So, it did take a little while before we started having these discussions. Now that we’ve been able to make a decision, we can make the next step.”
Naomi Clark, an MU graduate student and parent of children at the center, said she had been concerned a long time before the recent building collapse.
“For the last five years, we have been contacting individuals in administration, asking them about the long term plan,” she said. “We had heard that there was an expiration date on these buildings, and we were asking them, ‘What are the long term plans?’ and they would say, ‘We don’t know. We don’t have a plan.’”
Despite the fact that her family was already planning to move this summer due to her upcoming graduation, Clark said it is going to be hard to see the center go away.
“We have always been very happy with the direct care they received,” she said. “In 1974, MU did the right thing by starting the Student Parent Center. I hope MU will do the right thing again by restarting (it) at a safe, affordable, accessible location.”
Kimberly Bodner, in her fifth year as a student in MU’s Clinical Psychology doctoral program, had one son enrolled at the Center prior to the collapse. She said she was surprised by what was announced at the parent meeting.
“We just thought that they were going to voice our concerns,” she said. “We didn’t expect that they would announce that they would close and demolish University Village. “
Bodner said location of University Village was not suitable for a day care facility.
“I think it’s the right decision because there should not be a day care on this site,” she said. “This is a tough situation for everyone involved.”
As for the meeting itself, Bodner said parents were told that any relocation plan might take as long as one year to complete.
“The tone of the meeting was rather heated because some students were very concerned that there would be a future for the Student Parent Center and we wanted to make our concerns known,” she said. “We just hope that the university takes care of its students and their children.”