There’s nothing like sitting in your 8 a.m. class, trying to focus on the lecture, taking notes or completing an assignment while being surrounded by the beautiful chorus of wet coughs, sniffles and sneezes. ‘Tis the season!
I do not see this uncomfortable reality changing anytime soon given the structure of most class attendance policies. One of my classes this semester has an attendance policy in which the professor will deduct 0.7% from your final grade for each absence incurred, without exception for illness or emergency.
While 0.7% may not seem like much, when you are teetering between two letter grades, it has the potential to make a big difference in your class GPA.
Another professor of mine did not require attendance, but refused to post lecture notes on Canvas, so if you had to miss class for any reason, you were on your own.
Other professors adopt a policy in which a student may miss a set number of classes, often three, without penalty, to account for all possible sickness or last-minute conflicts throughout the semester. Once a student misses more than that allotted number, they face a certain percentage or letter grade final deduction. In practice, this type of policy has generally been unproblematic for me.
However, it does make me concerned for students who suffer chronic illnesses, which roughly half of young people are affected by, according to the Center for Disease Control. For a student with recurring pain or discomfort temporarily preventing them from activities like walking, writing and focusing on a lecture, three allowed absences is likely insufficient to prevent them from being penalized for a condition out of their control. Though students are technically able to seek accessibility exceptions, this process can be difficult. Students may also seek attendance memos to be sent to instructors from the Student Care and Resource Center, but the decision to excuse those absences is still at the instructor’s discretion.
Additionally, acute sickness can take longer than a couple of days to resolve symptoms, much less to stop being contagious to others. The flu, for instance, is typically contagious for about a week following the onset of symptoms, with those who have weakened immune systems remaining contagious for longer. Norovirus can be contagious for three days following resolution of symptoms, and some people remain contagious for weeks.
I would prefer it if my classmates could stop wet coughing on me and that if I were to contract the same illness, I could keep my symptoms confined to the comfort of my own room to rest and recover.
Given that so many of us can and will go through acute and chronic illness, mental health struggles and unforeseen events or emergencies, it is in the professors’ best interest to create flexible, nuanced attendance policies accounting for the fact we are all human.
Though we are in college to learn and take classes, most of us are hoping to begin careers after graduating, which may require taking on other opportunities, such as career fairs and workshops, clubs and organizations (like the Indiana Daily Student) and applying for jobs and internships. The attendance policy I first referenced in this article explicitly states job interviews are not a valid excuse to miss class. These opportunities can conflict with lecture times, but instructors should encourage students to pursue valuable extracurricular endeavors to help build our future.
As easy as it is for instructors to create a one-size-fits-all policy and claim it supports fairness and simplicity, the ability to attend class is anything but uniform among students throughout a semester.
I took an economics class last year that offered weekly extra credit opportunities in which students could attend a sort of office hours session for 50 minutes, with five different times available throughout the week. These sessions were an effective way to make up for a missed class while ensuring we actually learned the content we missed.
There is no simple solution to attendance policies encouraging students to show up when they can while also giving them the grace to succeed in class even in the face of occasional obstacles. I understand that with no attendance policy at all, some students would never show up to class, and though that is a personal choice, it may be in the school’s best interest to somehow incentivize attendance. Class size, class level and curriculum structure are all important factors that should go into the creation of an appropriate attendance policy.
Instructors can implement different opportunities to give students flexibility, such as allowing a student to attend office hours or collaborative learning sessions with the instructor, TA or other students to make up an absence. Another option is allowing students to submit quality notes or a quick practice problem based on the posted lecture slides or video to show they took the time to understand class material independently. Furthermore, professors could offer a virtual or recorded lecture for students to watch. Since a significant concern surrounding attendance and extra credit is that many students will take advantage of the flexibility from instructors, positive policies giving students the opportunity to put in time and effort, rather than punitive policies, are likely to reward those who do care.
Additionally, instructors can generally practice being compassionate by creating an environment in which students feel comfortable sharing relevant circumstances and granting students flexibility if they face uncontrollable circumstances, without requiring strict documentation from your grandmother’s funeral and the like.
Leila Faraday (she/her) is a junior studying policy analysis with minors in geography and urban planning.
