Free finger-painting and juice boxes before naptime seem to be more important than a free college education for some University students and staff. Recent on-campus demonstrations and editorials in The Red & Black have brought up the idea that the University should offer child care for students and staff.

But who will pay the cost? The McPhaul Child and Family Development Center, the only on-campus child care facility, provides care for 56 children and has a waiting list of more than 250 children in need of care. Parents pay between $140 and $180 a week for child care at the McPhaul Center. However, some low-income parents receive child care for free.

The small tuition paid by only some parents is not enough to pay for the massive cost increase necessary to meet the demand for child care on campus.

More kids means a larger staff, more insurance coverage, a larger facility and other costs. Surely a tuition increase would be necessary to cover these costs. The cost for increasing on-campus child care falls mainly on the student body. The University would have to handle logistical issues, but the funding for increased child care would come from tuition increases.

In her Sept. 21 column “Faculty needs better child care,” Jenna Martin wrote she doesn’t mind a tuition increase to help University parents in need of child care, but what about the other 30,000 students on campus?

Why should they pay for the child care of strangers? Tuition increases for child care may help the young children today, but the tuition increase ultimately may deprive them of the HOPE scholarship in the end. Many students attend the University for free because of the HOPE scholarship, which is funded by the state lottery. Since I arrived in Athens, I have seen HOPE funds decrease tremendously.

Three years ago I received $150 a semester for books – I now only receive $50. This is a sure sign that HOPE is hurting. Any tuition increase would take yet another bite out of the HOPE budget. No matter how small the bite is, it will affect thousands of college students throughout Georgia.

Having the University offer more child care is a small fix to a large problem. Child care on campus may help a few hundred University families, but what about the thousands of other families in Athens in dire need of proper child care? Will their employers be asked to start funding child care?

Thousands of families in the state of Georgia need child care. Perhaps this is an issue for the state to solve, not the University. I don’t know the intricacies of the state and federal budget and how to create social systems – I’ll leave that up to the state. But I do know if University families, be they students or faculty, force the University to offer child care, they may be doing so at the cost of a free higher education in the future.

- Richard Hamm is a photo stringer for The Red & Black.