Attendance: Our lives have been completely structured by it as we’ve grown up.
Whether it’s attendance in school, sports, church, clubs or so forth, it’s always been imperative to our success to attend everything we’re involved in.
During our K-12 education, it has always been mandatory to attend by the law and state. If we had too many tardies or absences it would negatively affect our grade, so close-to-perfect attendance was the key.
As we all progressed through different grades it was told to us that once we were in college, professors would not care about attendance anymore. It was our choice to attend class and be successful in our education. There would be no more attendance contracts or tardies that accumulated to the equivalence of an absent.
Unfortunately, that is not the case.
Although most professors leave your presence in class up to you, there are some that feel differently. They feel the need to make the point that if anyone misses class, there will be severe penalties to their grade.
For the majority of these professors, the grace number of absences is three. After that, any student exceeding the allotted amount of absences will begin to lose points and their grade will drop.
But does this really seem right? At least in high school everyone had an average of about five to 10 absences allowed a semester.
We are imperfect humans who get sick, have bad days, nights we can’t sleep and have a lot more going on in college than any other time in our life leading up till now.
We therefore make mistakes, but this is an education we are paying for.
We’re not forced to be in school six and a half hours a day like we used to be. We all chose to go to this university and receive an education.
If we have a day that we don’t feel well or simply don’t feel like going to class, that should be our choice as students. We shouldn’t be penalized if we get more than a specified number of absences.
“I think if you’re keeping up on your work and doing a good job in the class it shouldn’t matter. If you miss a lot of class and you fail, that’s your fault. It’s college; we’re adults and should be responsible,” said freshman Brodi Higginson.
The excuse most professors have to justify the policy is that if anyone misses more than three days in their class there is no way a student will be able to keep up with the curriculum and be successful.
But as a school, aren’t we so technologically advanced that almost all lectures, notes, assignments and tests are on Blackboard anyway?
If not, we’re social enough to be able to call or ask a friend what we missed and be up to date with the class before we return.
It’s understandable that professors don’t want to waste their time preparing lessons if students aren’t going to attend, but that’s never been the case. Classrooms are almost always full unless it’s near a holiday or there’s some bug going around school getting everyone sick.
We’re all adults now and are paying our fair money for tuition towards education. It should be our choice how often we choose to attend class and not have our grade be affected by the choice to attend less frequently.
If we simply can’t keep up with our classes and fall behind, that’s a natural consequence we will have to accept.
