By Gerrit Goodwin/ campus news editor
A lactation room for both faculty and students has recently been added to NE Campus in the Communications Arts Building (NCAB 1128A).
Bogdan Sierra Miranda/The Collegian
Pat Marling, NE health services coordinator, said the room is a little overdue.
“I sent out multiple emails last year requesting that the campus have a lactation room,” Marling said. “Last year alone, I had 135 requests to use health services in place of a lactation room.”
Marling said other TCC campuses such as TR and South already had the proper facilities for mothers. NE was just slow to do the same.
“Frequently, people would come into health services requesting somewhere to lactate, and I would have to give up my office just so they could have privacy,” she said. “We usually have sick people in here coughing or with fevers, so naturally health services is not the safest place to do that.”
Marlin said the room currently doesn’t have a sink even though she thinks it’s important to have one for sanitation purposes.
“The law requires that workspaces supply a lactation room that is not a restroom, but makes no mention of a sink as necessary,” she said. “I was told that the room was too far from a water line and that having one isn’t currently feasible.”
Victor Ballesteros, NE student development services director, visited the new facilities after it became available last week and encountered a faculty member who just finished using it.
“I talked to her about things we could do to make the room more accommodating, and she mentioned a few things,” he said. “Of course, the sink came up, but she also asked for us to include a lock on the door for privacy, a microwave, which is very doable, and for us to add something to liven the room up, which is currently very bland.”
Despite those flaws, both Marling and Ballesteros agree that having the room is progress.
“You wouldn’t want to eat your lunch in a bathroom, let alone prepare your child’s in one,” Marling said. “It’s good that women finally have some privacy for themselves.”
