The Student Government Association has a plan in the works to establish a day care on campus.

They are working with Lions with Cubs, which is a student organization designed to support students who are also parents with their education.

SGA President Sarah Green said the idea came about last semester.

“I had an SGA senator and a University Program Council delegate come to me and casually ask about why we do not have a day care on campus,” she said. “So, I met with the senator and the UPC delegate and three or four faculty members and the president of Lions with Cubs.”

Green said when they met, they passed ideas around about how they could begin to get the project started.

“We needed to answer questions like ‘What would this look like?’ ‘What would it be like to see this on campus?’ ‘Where would it go?’” she said.

They decided to split tasks among themselves to accomplish them more quickly. Green said they have decided on the next three steps they need to take.

‘We’ve been in contact with institutional research, they are making us a survey to send out to faculty staff and students,” she said. “Step one is to get the survey out when they send it to us.”

She said the survey will ask questions such as who has children, what age ranges, who pays for child care, how much is being paid, would an on campus day care be beneficial and what would be a reasonable cost.

“My job was to talk to people around the university to see if this was feasible and how we would go about doing this” she said. “Some people were looking into grants and some were looking into where would it go. We are still kind of at that point of, ‘This is a huge beast. What do we do with this?’”

Step two will be to look into the legal requirements, and step three will be to see how it could be funded, she said.

“Those are the steps we have to take before we can really present anything to anyone,” she said.

Recent graduate Andrew Kelly said he believes a day care would be a great idea and would have been helpful while he was at UNA.

“Of course there is a legal side, but if you incorporate students such as primary education students into the mix, along with students from other areas, it could really benefit and grow as an educational tool,” he said. “It would provide help for people who need a day care. So, if all the kinks are worked out, it could benefit people on both sides of the spectrum.”

Senior Marissa Phillips said getting a day care at UNA would be a dream come true, and all student parents and the university would benefit as well.

“I am a senior and I also have two jobs,” she said. “I have a beautiful two-year-old, and the convenience of having a day care right here at my college and job would make life a little easier for me. I know life as a single parent isn’t supposed to be easy, but it would also help the married couples.”