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Many Colorado students juggle college and parenting. Often they feel like outsiders on campus.

Deysi Parga Macias buckles the car seat for her son, Ramiro Martinez, 2, as she prepares to drop him off at her grandparents’ home in Arvada, Colorado, while she goes to school on Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023. Macias is a biochemistry major and on a pre-health track at the University of Colorado Boulder. (Rachel Woolf for Chalkbeat)
Deysi Parga Macias buckles the car seat for her son, Ramiro Martinez, 2, as she prepares to drop him off at her grandparents’ home in Arvada, Colorado, while she goes to school on Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023. Macias is a biochemistry major and on a pre-health track at the University of Colorado Boulder. (Rachel Woolf for Chalkbeat)
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Deysi Parga Macias faced a dilemma last fall in the first week of classes at the University of Colorado Boulder.

She couldn’t find daycare for her son, Ramiro, and her grandparents, who were supposed to watch him, were sick.

Macias, then 19, began to panic. Her biochemistry lab only allowed four absences before she failed the class — but missing even one would make her feel like a failure. Desperate, she sent her professor an email before class and asked if she could bring her then-year-and-a-half-old son.

“I said, ‘I am so sorry, and I know that this is unprofessional,’” Macias said.

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