By Erica Brosnan Special to The Chronicle
In high school, I followed a policy where nine or more unexcused absences resulted in a suspension or expulsion, depending upon the individual situation. While I was envious of my friends in schools with more lenient policies, I knew that once I got to college, I would have to adjust to an entirely different scenario.
What I didn’t know at the time was that most colleges don’t even have attendance policies. When I learned this, I began making decisions about whether or not it would be okay to miss a class here or there. Occasionally I would be asked to pick up a shift at work and I would miss class. Sometimes traffic would be so heavy I would either be 40 minutes late or would not make it at all. Other times I would be sick enough to want to stay in bed, but not go to a doctor to get a note, like I was forced to do in high school.
During my second semester of college however, I was shocked when I was handed a syllabus with the words “Attendance Policy” written in bold letters. Under it I was told that I would be docked a letter grade if I had more than two unexcused absences.
As somebody who takes their GPA very seriously, this policy frightened me because I knew that sometimes there may be unforeseeable circumstances that would force me to miss class. While I knew not to make a habit of missing class, I felt that being allowed only two absences for a class that met three times a week for roughly four months was a bit unreasonable.
Immediately, I checked if Hofstra had an attendance policy I wasn’t aware of. Instead, what I found was that Hofstra allows for each of the individual departments to set the policy for class attendance. However, when you look at each department, the majority, if not all, say that individual instructors are to determine an attendance policy for their courses.
While I’m not arguing that this is necessarily a terrible idea in and of itself, I do think there are some professors that take advantage of this freedom.
Throughout the semester, you simply do not know what will arise, and for professors to demand that students make it to every class or risk being dropped a letter grade – regardless of their academic performance – is absurd.
I’m not advocating that students should be awarded an A if they’ve only show up for the first and last day of class, but to have such harsh consequences for not showing up twice, especially when most students are balancing classes, part-time jobs and internships, is too much.
To solve this problem, individual instructors should not be allowed to determine attendance policies, and instead departments, or Hofstra University as a whole, should come up with a uniform attendance policy that will ensure students will attend the majority of classes, while also allowing some leeway for personal days.
When instructors are threatening students with dropped grades in order for them to come to class, it puts an unnecessary amount of stress on students who already juggle a multitude of responsibilities.
Students still need to be held accountable for their attendance. While I believe skipping every single class is unreasonable and lazy, I also feel that instructors coming up with their own arbitrary attendance policies is irrational. Hofstra should either nix attendance policies all together or create campus-wide guidelines.
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