The Severity of an Unexcused Absence
I can always feel it coming. That uncomfortable feeling in the back of your throat, the hesitation when you swallow, and even the achiness in your neck. When I get sick, I always know ahead of time. Getting sick in college, however, has been a completely new experience for me. The week before spring break I woke up one morning and felt it. The mucus from my unusually runny nose had begun to coat my throat and I just knew that the day ahead of me was going to be rough. Without my mom around to bring me medicine or orange juice, I dangerously balanced on the top of my chair as I reached to the top of my closet to access my medicine basket. Had I fallen, I really think I would have just given up for the day and laid there until my roommate returned to get me up. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) I was able to grab my bottle of Ibuprofen and move forward with my day. I stuffed my pockets with tissues and went down to the dining hall to get some orange juice. I felt alright at that point. On the sickometer, I would give it a 5. However, as the day went on, I started to feel worse and worse. My head ached and my neck was stiff. All I wanted to do was find as many blankets as possible, crawl in bed and heat up some tomato soup for myself. I managed to get through my classes and work and finally got back to my room at around 7:15. I reset my alarm for the next morning, loaded up on Ibuprofen, and went to bed.
As soon as my alarm went of in the morning, I could feel that the sickometer had moved up to a ten overnight and I was incapable of leaving my room. Even if I could, I did not want to risk infecting all of my classmates and ruining the weekend of somebody else. As sick as I was, I realized I still had one more issue to factor in: the absence policy for the theater department states that “The only absences that will be excused are those due to a verifiable emergency such as: illness requiring attention by a health care provider; the hospitalization, death, or serious illness of a family member; or required appearance in a court of law” and that “After one unexcused absence, each unexcused absence will lower the final grade 1/3 point (A to A-, B- to C+, etc.)” (Current Student Resources, para. 1). While some of my classes outside of the department offer a few “free” unexcused absences, my grade will still be docked once those days pass. What makes this serious is that if my GPA is ever to drop below a 3.0 by the end of spring semester my freshman, sophomore, or junior year, I lose my scholarship that allows me to be here. For me, this is not just another college. Ithaca College, to me, is a dream that I have been given the chance to fulfill. Theater behind the scenes has been my passion since I discovered it in 4th grade. It is the perfect combination of artistic expression, nerdy technical gadgetry, and rugged construction ideas that satisfies all of my aspirations. The theater program at Ithaca College is ranked among the top ten in the nation, essentially making it an Ivy League level program. Students go through auditions and interviews to get in, spend up to 80 hours a week working on productions and doing the assortment of assigned projects for design and technical classes, and on top of that, at least a third of the total 18-20 students entering will be cut from the program with in the first two years just because the teachers do not see enough potential in them. Graduating students often find work at the Broadway level, which is certainly on the top of my “To-Do” list in life. So, in essence, my dream is currently at stake because I’m too sick to attend one day of class.
There are a few reasons why this makes absolutely no sense to me. First, college courses are a consumable product. We, as students, are the consumer. According to CollegeBoard, an organization that many of us took advantage of to research schools and find good matches, the cost per credit hour at Ithaca College is $1,121. This averages out to approximately $80 per individual class. Imagine going to a restaurant, ordering a nice meal, and then getting full about half way through the meal. Then, your waiter comes over to your table and says “Oh, at this establishment we require you to finish your meal or else we charge a ‘food-wasting’ fee”. In the end, I would have been better off ordering a smaller meal resulting in less profit for the restaurant. The same idea applies to college. A student would be pressured into dropping classes that they are missing a lot of, thusly paying the school less money.
In addition, the purpose of a grading system is to represent the amount of knowledge as student has shown on the given topic of a class. According to the standards kept at Harvard University, a grade represents “the quality and quantity of your work submitted throughout the term”(Harvard 1). In other words, all that a professor should judge when determining the grade of an individual is the body of work completed by the student. Therefore, lowering a grade for missed classes would be an inaccurate representation of the knowledge a student has shown.
So, how necessary is it that I should feel obliged to crawl my way across campus to class? Under the current policy, I received a 2.98 GPA after fall semester. This was a result of missing two classes past the allotted amount in my U.S. Politics class. Had I attended those classes, my GPA would have been a 3.12. Had this occurred at the end of spring semester, missing two classes essentially would have been grounds for me to not be able to return to Ithaca. To answer my question, even under feverish conditions, the policies set up by the college and its individual professors forced me to leave my room and participate in classes all day long.
Soon I encountered a second feeling that I can always foresee. A slight constant gag, a harsh turning in my stomach, and an increased heaviness in breathing. I ran out of my Basic Lighting and Sound Technology class and found the closest bathroom. I returned to class without mentioning what had happened and attempted to catch up the notes I had missed.
As Thoreau, author of Walden, said, "That government is best which governs least". I feel that as adults, we students can maintain responsibility for attending class on our own and even if we cannot, the beneficiary of our money should not penalize that decision. The college setting is no place for an absence policy. As one of the many students paying thousands of dollars to attend Ithaca College, I feel that it is time for the school to take a more progressive stance and give students a choice: attend class when they can and when they want with the knowledge that failure to attend might hurt their own personal achievement in the class. We are all adults and a little trust will go a long way.
Works Cited
1. "Grades – Harvard Summer School 2010 – Boston/Cambridge." Harvard Summer School | Summer College Courses & Summer Programs. Web. 14 Apr. 2011
2. Pestello, Fred P. "The Social Construction of Grades." Teaching Sociology. American Sociological Association. 414-17. Jstor, 2008. Web. 14 Apr. 2011.
3. "Ithaca College." Collegeboard.com. Collegeboard, 2010. Web. 14 Apr. 2011.
4. Byron, Lee. "Attedance Policy for B.F.A. Classes." Ithaca College Theater Dept., 30 Jan. 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2011.
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