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ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEENTH YEAR, ISSUE 4
Faculty struggle with child care amid pandemic
As COVID-19 rages on, Duke students pour into gentrifying Durham
By Preetha Ramachandran University News Editor
Rebecca Torrence Contributing Reporter
At the end of March, a year after Erin O’Brien Regan first signed her lease at an apartment complex off West Campus, her landlords threatened to raise rent $80 a month. Duke gives Regan, 40 and in the Class of 2021, $900 a month for housing while she finishes her bachelor’s degree. But she had just lost her bartending job. In the midst of a pandemic, she saw the rental inflation as a money grab. She told the landlords that if they raised her rent, “they would lose Duke’s money, and good luck getting in another low-income tenant with guaranteed on-time payments like me.” They didn’t raise her rent. “If I didn’t have the security of Duke, I would be evicted by now,” she said. The Durham affordable housing market, volatile even before the coronavirus pandemic, is now on the verge of collapse. The statewide eviction moratorium expired June 20, leaving hundreds of Durhamites, newly unemployed and months behind on rent, in danger of homelessness. Then Duke denied campus housing to most juniors and seniors, and students poured into the city to take over apartments and houses hastily secured mere weeks or even days before the first day of classes. Affordable housing experts worry Duke’s decision could exacerbate Durham’s housing crisis by encouraging landlords to raise rent and evict low-income tenants as students backed by the wealthy institution and familial capital vie for last-minute living arrangements. The frenzy for off-campus housing came as a surprise to Mary Pat McMahon, vice provost and vice president for student affairs. She said the policy was designed to push juniors and seniors to remain at home if possible and take classes remotely. “I did not anticipate the extent to which people were going to read [Duke’s decision] that way,” McMahon said. “It feels that it’s more extensive than I thought.” McMahon recognized that students might have chosen to stay home if the decision had come sooner. But she said various
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Throughout the summer and as Duke reopens, one question is constantly on the mind of faculty with kids: What does child care look like during the COVID-19 pandemic? Faculty have taken a variety of approaches to managing their professional and personal obligations, but for many, working from home without child care has meant decreased productivity—and anxiety about the long-term implications of that productivity dip. Catherine Mathers, associate professor of the practice of international comparative studies, is mother to two eightyear-old twin girls. Her family decided to split child-care and homeschooling duties with a family that lived next door. “We were basically all together that weekend where everything started to get shut down and schools were shut down, and so we basically quarantined together,” Mathers said. “We had four kids in ‘school’ for six hours a day.” Mathers said she and her husband, also in academia, are lucky that their jobs allow for doing work “in [their] own time” and taking care of the kids, but she recognizes that this is far from the reality for everyone. “I’m speaking from a position and a faculty position that is, I think, very privileged in the context of the University and then of course even more privileged in the context of labor and work outside the University, outside academia,” she said. Mathers emphasized a few key areas in which the University could provide support to faculty with kids at home, one being a message of support to untenured faculty and the other being providing space and resources to do work outside the home. “Some academics, maybe they have houses with their own study and whatever, and they can close the door. We don’t have that sort of space,” she said, “I don’t have a printer. I can’t scan. And of course, getting materials to students. I can’t do that.” Assistant Professor of History James Chappel shared similar sentiments. Chappel, the father of two young kids, felt—as did Mathers—that the six-month tenure clock extension Duke put in place due to the pandemic was an important message of support to untenured faculty. “That’s like the biggest material thing I can imagine that they could do,” Chappel said. “And they did do that. To me, that showed a recognition, even though it doesn’t make our lives easier on the day to day, it’s a recognition that, ‘We know that this is going to be a black hole of work.’” Chappel said that the balance between child care and work has been challenging, citing a 14-hour parenting day from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., only after which he can start working. “Am I really going to start working after that? I could and I have been, but I feel so completely drained at the end of the day,” he said. “I’m aware of the privilege, but on the day to day
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