 "Photo: Tiffany Tran")
As students, we all pay for a service: the opportunity to receive an education at Texas A&M University. As paying customers, we should be given the right to use this service as we wish. A consumer should be able to use a service a lot, a little or maybe not at all. Students are paying customers who deserve to use their own judgement in attending class, with no one telling them how to enjoy the service.
If a student can never go to class and still manage a grade that meets his or her expectations, an attendance policy should not stand in their way. Precious time was saved, and academic excellence was still achieved. Some classes are inherently boring, and a few professors are too caught up in the frills of academia to realize that their lecture is as boring as watching mold grow. While some classes are comparable to torture, others can be intellectually stimulating and fun. Either way, a student should have the basic right to attend at his or her own leisure.
The typical college student is busy even without classes, which is why students complain that school gets in the way of college. Maintaining an active lifestyle as a normal college student can be demanding. Priorities come and go, and while the real education that leads to the final degree is always a focal point, the truth is that other neat things often happen. Random road trips, epic parties that make you feel funny and sleep in the next day and other functions like open forums and interesting guest speakers sometimes conflict with class schedules. Not to mention many students who hold down a job to pay for their education. College students live flexible lifestyles that are open to spontaneity, and it only makes sense that class schedules should be flexible as well.
Test day will forever be the great equalizer. Students who regularly skip class are naturally punished for their lack of effort when they receive a poor grade. But some professors escalate the injury by docking points for missing class as well. This is ridiculous, students pay this school thousands of dollars for seats in classes that a particular college has determined to be mandatory for a degree plan. If a student has to enroll in a class to graduate, and that class happens to suck, does the student get money back upon completion? A&M has yet to come up with a money-back guarantee plan.
The only alternative is not to attend instead of being subjected to biweekly sessions of an hour and 15 minutes of daydreaming and texting. If a student can happily achieve a satisfactory grade without being held captive in a classroom, that type of brilliance should not punished by deducting points for absences.
I have had classes where the professor docked one point from the final letter grade for each tardy, and a full letter grade after three absences, excused or otherwise. This isn't junior high school. I'm paying a king's ransom in tuition to even have the opportunity to be late to class in the first place. Professors should check their egos a little bit, and realize that students don't always have the time to go to their classes. It may be sad that some students find their professor's life's work pointless, disengaging and boring. However, those professors can't make people care by jeopardizing student's GPAs and futures.
For the record, students should try their best to go to class. I'm too dumb to learn anything valuable on my own accord, but I envy those that can never go to class and still make grades that boost class averages. But those students don't get paid for performance, in fact they pay a terribly large sum of money not to go to class. As paying customers, they shouldn't be penalized for not fully pursuing the service they are entitled to. Instead, professors they pay would be wise to come up with effective ways to engage students and stimulate impressionable minds, rather than caress bruised egos through punitive reinforcement.
Steve Humeniuk is a senior political
science major.
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