Attendance policy ‘ridiculous,’ students don’t learn falling asleep

Brittiny Dunlap / Columnist

The School of Communications instituted an attendance policy in the fall that allows students to miss only a certain number of classes before their grades are affected. The number of classes that can be missed is based on the number of times a week the class meets.

To be blunt, I think the policy is ridiculous.

I did not come to college to have the administration be my babysitter. I am perfectly capable, and mature enough to decide when to attend and not to attend class.

While the School of Communications preaches that it is a professional school and is trying to instill good habits in students early, instituting an attendance policy is not going to teach us anything about job responsibility.

I have heard that the School of Communications makes the argument that when you have a real job, you can’t just skip work for the day, so why not have the same policy for attending class?

However, I do not have a real job that pays me money to show up and do my work. Instead, I pay the university more than $20,000 per year to attend class.

I pay them. They don’t pay me. That is the key difference. I should be able to choose how to spend my time and money.

I will admit that I do skip class. Most of the time it is because I have not gotten enough sleep and would rather not show up at all than to show up and fall asleep and disrespect my professor and my peers.

I am not trying to play the role of the bitter student who has been affected by the new policy, I simply just do not agree.

I realize that this is an institution that we attend to learn and better ourselves. However, how is anyone to learn anything if they are constantly falling asleep or do not care to be there? They don’t.