Attendance earned, not forced

The attendance policy at EMU has become an underlying matter of contention among the student body and needs to be brought to the attention of professors. As a graduating senior with a major in liberal arts and minors in art and communications, I have taken several studio art and "hands-on" computer classes that require attendance for demonstrations and visual learning.

In addition, the other classes included in my course load also require attendance. If you fail to attend class, it results in your grade being lowered. In reality, the grade point deduction needs to come from a lack of participation and not from the students’ attendance record. I believe that it is unreasonable for a professor to deduct points solely on the student’s absence from class. Courses that are primarily discussion-based or interactive classes should penalize the students for a lack of participation. It needs to be specified that a lack of contribution is the source of deduction and not attendance in itself.

As I mentioned above, my major involves many visual classes that require my presence and interaction with others to learn the course material. I would only be hurting myself by choosing not to attend these classes and for that reason I go to class on a regular basis. On the other hand, I have also taken several classes where the professor insists on lecturing straight from the power point slides, or the text itself with no added material outside of these. To add insult to injury, it is these exact professors that maintain a strict attendance policy and require me to come to class, as if I can’t read the book by myself and learn the same amount.

Subsequently, it comes down to a simple question. If a student doesn’t feel that it is necessary to attend class to obtain sufficient knowledge from the lecture, then why should they? If I can get everything that I need to know from a text book or power point slides that are posted on Blackboard and still get an A on the test without evidently needing to go to class, then why would I go? I feel that professors think the reasons students skip class is merely because they don’t care or would rather be hanging out with their friends or sleeping in.

I have chosen to attend college and I pay a large amount of money each year to do so. I pay for the opportunity to learn from an interactive class with other students and from a professor that facilitates this exact environment. I could have paid a lot less for a college degree online if I wanted to learn on my own.

The quality of the professor and the content of the class should be enough to encourage me to go to class. Who wants to sit in a classroom and listen to a professor lecture in a monotone voice for an hour, over information that is straight from the book? Come on people, make it worth my time, make it interesting.

Tia can be reached at widmerb@emu.edu for further discussion.