Kalika Valentine-Erikson

You roll out of bed, maybe shower—maybe not, throw on some clothes and run to class. This can take five minutes, tops.

But what if you were responsible to get somebody else ready in the morning?

This somebody needs help getting dressed, eating breakfast and getting to daycare. Among all that, you still need to get yourself ready to go to class. Would you be able to make an 8 a.m.?

Many student-parents who attend Winona State University live this scene every morning. Whether it’s a single mom with one child, a married father with three children or anything in between, being a parent and a student makes things more difficult.

Figuring out a schedule that works is difficult for any student, but adding a child or two to this schedule makes creating the perfect class list even more important, for factors beyond what any traditional student could fathom.

Money is a major driving force. For example, if a student-parent has an 8 a.m. class and either a 9 a.m. or 4 p.m. section of another class is available, but the student cannot get into the 9 a.m. section, the student is typically forced to keep their child in daycare for that entire time, because daycares do not typically want the child in and out all day. Instead of the child having to be in daycare for three hours, from 7:30 a.m. until 10:30 a.m., the child has to be in daycare from 7:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m., an extra six hours that the student-parent has to pay for.

Along with money, timing is a major factor when student-parents create their schedules. Daycare and school hours are specific, so many student parents need to fit their school hours into the same time-frame as school or daycare hours.

The Winona State Student Senate recently motioned to make things a little easier for student parents. A proposal that would allow for first-year and sophomore student-parents who are single to register early has passed the first step in becoming practiced procedure.

Ambrosia Harkins, a single mother of one, assisted with the creation of the proposal.

“I assisted with gathering statistics on our student-parents at WSU and figuring out how many students would benefit from it,” she said.

Harkins also spoke to the senate about the struggles she has as a single student-parent.

“I spoke before the student senate and shared the struggles of being a single parent and what a difference priority registration would make. I gave my story of how I have to have classes only within a certain time frame because I have to be done in order to pick my daughter up from school and feed her supper and stuff like that,” she said.

Harkins also added in how being able to register early would have saved her a substantial amount of money in child care costs.

“I also spoke about how this semester I pay a ridiculous amount in childcare because my class schedule is all over the place, but if I would have had priority registration I could be saving over $200 a month,” she said.

Harkins brought her four-year-old daughter to the senate debate, which she said may have helped to sway the committee in her favor. Seeing the face of a student parent and her daughter may have made the issue more real to traditional student members of the senate.

Because of time, money and many other factors, single student-parents need priority registration. This could possibly come to fruition if the senate does decide to pass the motion and it would greatly benefit many single student-parents.