Attendance has always been one of those things about ACU that I think is taken way too seriously. Class attendance, that is.

The fact that teachers can penalize a student’s grade just because he or she has missed the class a certain number of times is beyond me. Last time I checked, students pay for classes. Shouldn’t we get to decide how we use our money?

Take public universities, for example. There might be a few out there, but I have never heard of a public university that takes attendance into effect when it comes to the final grade for a class. They’ve had the mindset that coming to class is your business; professors get paid either way.

That’s the view I share. We the students are the ones paying for classes. We are the ones that will have to pay back the student loans we accumulate, and it will be on us. So if that’s the case, why should deciding whether we show up for a class hurt our final grade?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not asking for professors to hand out free passes. If a student happens to miss a class that has a test or quiz or project due, and the policy for that class is no late work, then the student is at a loss. If a student decides to miss so much class they become too far behind and fail the final, then that’s his or her problem.

But my argument is that over a semester, why do classes require you to be there a certain percentage of the semester if you can do fine even after missing some days?

The rationale might be with good intentions; ACU wants students in class so they can be there to learn the material. But if a student is smart enough to keep up with the workload and only comes in for the tests and quizzes, why should that not be allowed?

To me, it feels like we are treated like we are in high school. And at a university where we are given adult workloads and expected to act like adults, it seems contradictory.

I think I had another point to make, but I have to go to class now.