Ditching demands detention

The Academic Senate passed another piece of useless politicking Thursday.

The Planning and Education Policies Committee submitted a revised attendance policy to the senate for a vote late last week. The policy aimed to refine excused absences from Cal State Long Beach classes.

The revisions include policies regarding illness and injury to oneself and one's family members and religious obligations.

Most professors on campus will excuse a student's absence if the student calls the teacher's office and can provide a doctor's excuse. However, many times the student may only have to go the Student Health Center on campus for a doctor's note. How easy is that? What is the new policy going to change?

Most students ditch class because the class or the teacher is just boring. Or students have other things to do, like typing papers, working or fulfilling other obligations.

When a student is ill, some professors are likely to excuse the absence with nothing more than a simple phone call. Other than major illness, students only ditch when they suspect there is "nothing going on" in that class.

Many teachers do not even enforce an attendance policy because they realize that when students fail to get to class they are only hurting themselves. The majority of classes depend on attendance for successful completion. If a student doesn't show up for scheduled lectures, he or she is not likely to do well in said class.

Also, students who choose not to up show to class are only wasting their own money. Full-time students pay more than $900 dollars per semester. That breaks down to around $75 per unit. Students should be able to waste that money if they so choose. Besides when students ditch an already crowded class, one less person has to sit on the floor.

Teachers on the other hand, are paid whether they have 20 students in class or just one. Therefore, teachers' feelings on the attendance policy ride more on their compassion and desire for students to do well in the class than on what the Academic Senate and the Planning and Education Policies Committee say is the campus attendance policy.

Honestly, does the committee and the senate expect to change students' attitudes about class with a new revised attendance policy? Students are going to ditch, especially on a commuter campus like CSULB. And when students ditch, they are not worried about having the absence excused.

CSULB President Maxson supports the policy. But what gives him the right to force students into classes they have paid for? Perhaps the policy will even have the opposite effect. Maybe students will be more likely to ditch if they can get the absense excused with a simple one-week notice to the teacher.