University of Wisconsin-Madison
Since 1892 dailycardinal.com
Fall Farewell Issue 2016
l
fall farewell
2 0 1 6
BEN DAVIS/THE DAILY CARDINAL
Parental leave policy at UW-Madison lags behind other Big Ten institutions Story by Luisa de Vogel In December 2014, kids filled the lobby of Bascom Hall as professors and teaching assistants held office hours amid the chaos—meanwhile, just down the hall, UW-Madison administration attempted to work through the noise. The Teaching Assistants’ Association, UW-Madison’s graduate student union, planned this “playin” to demand paid parental leave for UW-Madison faculty and TAs. “It’s easy to forget that graduate students are people with families and our needs extend beyond our own food and housing,” said
Katie Zaman, a TA in the sociology department. “We stayed for about four hours and attracted press attention and certainly were noticed by the administration.” UW-Madison does not have any university-specific parental leave policy, but instead follows federal requirements. Faculty and staff are granted leave according to the Federal Family Medical Leave Act or the Wisconsin Family and Medical Leave Act, which guarantee six or 12 weeks, respectively, of leave for any university employee. However, UW-Madison employees are required to use their federally mandated sick leave for the birth or adoption of a child. Mike Bernard-Donals, vice provost for faculty and staff, said fac-
ulty fall under one of these two policies based on how much sick leave they have accrued during their time at the university.
“When you have an infant that’s screaming and not sleeping, even if you want to be doing your best as a teacher, you’re not going to be there.” Christa Olsen professor UW-Madison
According to a 2015 report by the Faculty Senate, UW-Madison and the University of Iowa are the only two Big Ten institutions with-
out any university-specific parental leave policy. Eight of the other institutions—including Purdue University, Northwestern University and the University of Nebraska—have policies that provide paid teaching relief of 12 or more weeks. Zaman said many TAs help each other by filling in for emergency or last-minute sick days because they cannot simply cancel their lectures or sections. “That’s helpful to have that supportive environment, but we shouldn’t have to do that,” Zaman said. Prior to TAA’s play-in, faculty within the College of Letters and Science created their own parental leave policy in 2013—it is now the only UW-Madison college to have
such a policy for faculty. According to Christa Olsen, a professor in the English department, in the absence of any decent policy for leave, women faculty members recommended that their time off be based off the percentage of their time teaching. “That meant that having been here for three years, I had accrued enough leave that I could take off both classes in the fall following my childbirth,” Olsen said. “I was still doing service and I was still doing research, but the part of my schedule that is most tied to having to be somewhere was taken off the table.” However, along with the benefits of the L&S parental leave policy,
parental page 3
“…the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”