Beginning in Fall 2023, Ithaca College has been hosting the Coddington Road Community Center’s child care programs in the Circle Apartments Community Center. While on-campus child care is an important resource the college should offer, placing the program in an exclusively residential area is arbitrary and potentially unsafe. When planning this collaboration with CRCC, more thought should have been put into where the program was being housed and what risks that may present for the children.
Circle Apartments is a purely residential area for students that is deliberately detached from campus to give juniors and seniors the opportunity to live more independently than they would in a dorm. The way students act in Circles may differ greatly from how they act on campus as they are detached from that academic setting. This allows students to live more freely both inside and outside of their apartments and make potentially irresponsible decisions that could be seen by the children. Even inside of the Circles Community Center — although there are rules on when Circles residents can use the bathrooms as opposed to the children — using the same bathroom could pose risks.
Regardless of how students may or may not act around the children, Circles Community Center also presents risks because it is extremely close to a busy on-campus road. When driving in the Circle Apartments, students tend to drive very quickly and with some disregard for traffic guidelines. With the busy Circles roadway and state route 96B not far beyond that, traffic presents a real risk.
While the children are always being monitored by staff, accidents can still happen. There are other areas of campus that are farther from busy roads and can be more easily monitored than the outdoor area surrounding the Circles Community Center. When considering the long-term plans for on-campus child care, the college should shift away from the Circles Community Center. Moving the children onto the main campus creates a safer environment and decreases associated risks. Child care workers are hardworking, dedicated individuals who do their best to protect children, but it is the responsibility of the college to mitigate the possibility of risk.
