You wake up and it’s 9:14 a.m., and your first class started at 9:05. Scrambling, you brush your teeth with what you hope was your toothbrush and decide to grab a quick breakfast. In the midst of the hustle and bustle, you notice the raging blizzard diluting your view of the Minneapolis skyline. Check your email, and it looks like there is no class cancellation. You could always snuggle back into bed, but something stops you — the attendance policy.

Before I get all worked up, let me say I think there is a value to participation points in class. It cushions the final grade and is an incentive to actually show up for a lecture, regardless of how engaging the professor is. However, the current policy in my Spanish department at the University — and perhaps others unknown to me — is that if you have more than five unexcused absences, your grade is reduced an entire letter grade. What’s more alarming is it will continue to be lowered with each additional absence. In a class that meets daily, five unexcused absences in a semester isn’t unheard of. You could oversleep, miss your bus, get a flat tire, get scheduled for work, have an interview, etc. The list is endless and, ultimately, the policy is absurd.

If we are paying to take a class, regardless of if we are attending it, there should be no further penalty. The stress of catching up, the fact you probably won’t be able to get a letter of recommendation and the monetary loss from missing a class you paid for should be enough.

On the other end, let’s assume the person is able to keep up on the material without attending class. Shouldn’t the focus be on the mastering of the material, not the course of action it took to master it? Should we not be rewarding those who take the time to study it on their own time versus the guy who shows up but hardly participates? There should be more focus on how mentally engaged a person is in their coursework and not whether they are physically present. Until we can figure out how to do that, we are paying to be penalized.