Junior Children at Reunions
A Harvard and Radcliffe reunion is a series of events for adults in an urban college environment. Most reunion events are not suitable for children or of interest to them. Most reunion committees do, however, schedule an outing day or field day as a family event on Saturday afternoon. This event can be designed to appeal to children of all ages and, additionally, gives classmates an opportunity to introduce their entire family to each other.
In 1995, because of a high demand from the 10th, 15th, and 20th reunion committees, Radcliffe implemented a pilot childcare program for these three June reunions. Children are welcome to stay with you in the dormitories whether you use this childcare program or not. Childcare will, once again, be offered for children ages 3 years and older on Friday and Saturday evenings at Radcliffe's Cronkhite Graduate Center on Ash Street. This program is limited and you must register your children in advance. Preference will be given to those Harvard-Radcliffe families that sign up for the entire program. Registration information for this program will go out in your winter reunion mailings. The company being used for this program is Children's Conference Care, Inc. (CCCI).
Classmates who commute to reunion events from homes in the greater Boston area should make their normal baby-sitting arrangements and leave the CCCI child care program for those traveling from afar. Classmates who do travel from afar and bring children may also be able to link up with local classmates to share baby-sitters.
The reunion committee may also wish to investigate additional short-term day care arrangements (see Appendix iii), but it is likely that such arrangements will be difficult to secure and that the demand, although usually quite vocal, will be too low to warrant the effort. If there is interest, however, one or two classmates should be designated as contacts to facilitate this process. If the demand is great and you have a committee member that is clearly willing to embrace, investigate, and implement more elaborate child care provisions for the times not covered by the CCCI child care program on Friday and Saturday nights, it is possible but complicated. The designated committee member should get in touch with the HAA directly. The HAA will provide an outline of steps that must be taken to insure that all of the right things are being done before a supplemental childcare program can be offered.
The HAA does not have the staff available to implement supplemental childcare programs that go beyond the scope of the CCCI program offered above.
