My name is Meredith Kelling, and I am a St. Louis area native and a graduate student in the English Department. I am in pursuit of my Ph.D., which means that, for six years, I move through phases of full-time coursework, teaching and other assistantships and dissertation writing. You are meant to accomplish this on $25,696 a year—the amount of my yearly graduate stipend. But too often, there is a strong tension between being successful as a graduate student and being able to live, feed your family and pay your bills.

My own story is but one example of how the grad student model can fail to work: I have a seven-month-old child, whom I delivered during my third year in my program. It must be said that she arrived somewhat awkwardly into my professional life. On more than one occasion when I told someone I was expecting, they responded with “Oh!…Is this good news?” It was if I had announced my intention to travel to Mars, so alien was the idea of having a child to many in my academic environment.

Of course, it’s true that motherhood is tricky and expensive. I expected that. As a recent mother, I’ve seen the value of my time skyrocket in the past year to account for childcare, medical bills and costs of living related to the needs of my child. But I didn’t expect the emergency C-section, not all of which was covered by my insurance through the graduate school, and for which I am making monthly payments on a bill equating to nearly two months of my stipend payments. What was already far below a living hourly wage of $15—when accounting for the hours of study and class preparation that is the normal workload of a graduate student—has shrunk as I now seek to balance studying with childcare and work to make ends meet to afford daycare.

It often feels that motherhood and graduate study are at odds with one another. But while my challenges as a working graduate student mother are often framed as my own problem, I think that they should not be. Those questioning my decision to have a child during graduate study might do well to consider that when we place heavy burdens with respect to childbearing on women in the beginning of their careers, we initiate what is a long and troubling system of pressuring mothers to opt out of academia—often for the same personal life choices for which men receive professional rewards—ending at the top with very few positions of institutional authority inhabited by women. Wash. U. should recognize that those whose needs extend beyond what is offered by the graduate schools are as valuable to the University as those whose needs are few.

Wash. U. should be a more inclusive space for study and work, because diversity is not an accommodation project, but a pedagogical and intellectual practice. The work we do in the University is better when people of all socioeconomic backgrounds, racial and ethnic identities, abilities, genders and sexual orientations are here to study and produce it. Beyond that, this university, as the third-largest employer in the state, most certainly has an obligation to pay every one of its workers a living wage. That’s an obligation that Wash. U. makes for itself in its declared mission to “enhance the lives and livelihoods of…the people of the greater St. Louis community.”

I believe firmly that it is Wash. U.’s problem if people who work at an institution with a $7.5 billion endowment can’t afford to feed their families. If the University truly acted on its intention to “enhance lives and livelihoods,” they could easily make it equally affordable for everyone to complete their studies and perform their jobs—including administrative, custodial, food service and public safety duties—without putting themselves in financial precarity. A living wage and employee protections as afforded to workers under U.S. law should be available to everyone. Healthcare—including mental health services, dental and vision—should not only be fully subsidized, but readily available without time-consuming and difficult scheduling and payment policies hampering access to care, for themselves and their dependents. Childcare, for which graduate students receive a partial subsidy, should be fully subsidized for all workers with kids. That is what a level-playing field for the University would look like. That is what a truly excellent university would look like.

And Wash. U. can look to its own scholars for insights on the changes that need to be made. According to a recent Clark-Fox Institute Policy Report issued by Wash. U.’s own Brown School of Social Work, a living wage and access to childcare are crucial to the financial stability of working Missouri families. In light of this policy recommendation from one of the nation’s leading social work schools, I have joined with the Wash. U. Graduate Workers Union to demand the following changes be made on our campus: an increase to a $15 hourly minimum wage for all campus workers (or $31,000 minimum annual salary), free onsite childcare for all campus employees, including graduate students, and a University-wide commitment to improved childcare throughout the state of Missouri.

If you, like me, believe that poverty wages and institutional excellence do not coexist, I ask you to reach out to our chancellor, Mark Wrighton, to let him know.