-Holly Newton

Cliques, rumors, rampant immaturity, poor communication among staff and students; it’s high school all over again here, but one academic feature in particular has stuck out to me over the years: attendance policies.

High school attendance is required by law, until a certain age at least, so I understand the need for enduring all those daily roll calls. But in college, too? Really?

A common warning thrown at college students to prevent class-cutting is that a certain percentage of their tuition money is lost for every class missed. If you want to do whatever math you have to do to try to convince students of that so-called logic, go for it, but students really are drowning in debt for the one piece of paper they receive after four or five years of earning grades that make that paper attainable. I’m pretty sure no one is paying us to be here, so if we can earn those grades without attending every single class, why be punished?

A professor is obviously needed to make those grades credible, but I don’t understand how perfect attendance makes my understanding of the concepts I am graded on any more credible than if I learn some of the concepts on my own without mindlessly sitting in a classroom. Grades should be about a students’ comprehension of the subject matter, not on their everyday physical presence.

Sure, it makes for easy points to lure more students to lecture, and it also makes for better participation in class discussions, which can be a good thing for both the professor and other students in the class, but if I can read and understand a chapter in a textbook, then why waste an hour just to have a professor re-read to me right out of the book everything I just studied?

I understand college is meant to prepare us for the “real world.” If I’m always sleeping through the first couple hours of my work day, I’ll obviously no longer have a job, but the beauty of college is that though it does, indeed, teach us more responsibility and self-discipline, it also in many ways is nothing like the “real world” and allows us our last chance at not having to yet be quite so responsible.

Sometimes things take precedence over class attendance, and I know, because I’ve been told by some, professors don’t want to dig through dozens of e-mails of excuses as to why students weren’t in a particular class that day. Professors often may have no idea what a student is going through and what life events each one is dealing with. Unless it’s major and going to affect a student’s long-term attendance, they don’t need floods of e-mails explaining the details, and, sometimes it’s too personal to be anyone’s business but the student’s.

For those who choose not only to not attend class but also to not attempt to learn the material, their punishment is lower grades and the failure to gain knowledge from which they would benefit, and they should be held accountable. But if a student is able to excel without being in class every day, he or she does not deserve the punishment of docked points or whatever else is used.

I realize there are some professors who put a lot of time into their lessons and feel their work is wasted if hardly anyone shows up to class. Their hard work should be respected, and I’m not saying it’s OK to never attend class. But if I have a time conflict with something I feel is more important than a random class lecture, it’s not fair, or all that reasonable really, for me to be punished simply for not being physically present one day even if I’m doing the work and grasping the concepts I’m supposed to be grasping. If I can’t make it to class, I can’t make it to class, and as long as a few absences here and there aren’t affecting my understanding, there is no problem at all, and one should not be reflected in the grade I receive.