Staff Reports
Crowder’s Administrative Withdrawal Policy is as follows, “If the student doesn’t attend a seated course or fails to participate in an online course for 14 (fourteen) consecutive calendar days, they will be administratively withdrawn. They can request reinstatement by contacting the Academic Affairs Office. Only one allowed per-course, per-semester.”
This is only one of Crowder’s attendance policies, however, it is the one that is most known. Also the most experienced by students.
Although, recently, Keith Zoromski, Crowder’s Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs, has reminded instructors of a notion to the policy. If a student is in contact with their instructor and caught up with work, they should still be counted present when they can’t attend. But do all instructors follow this, or believe it is right to do?
This hasn’t always been how instructors do attendance though. In the past, students have been withdrawn from class, even when they were caught up and in contact. “As a single mom, managing class and kids can be difficult, I’m not able to make it to classes sometimes when my kids are sick, or when my sitter isn’t available. So when my car broke down one week, and my kid was sick the next, I wasn’t able to attend my class that met once a week. Resulting in administrative withdrawal. The thing is, I was fully caught up and in contact with my instructor the whole time.”
Surely this isn’t the only time an issue like this has occurred. Many students have had their own experiences with the attendance policy, and even more have at least an opinion on it. “It’s a strange rule” says a Crowder student “because you can miss a class and still turn in papers. Attendance shouldn’t be a thing students get punished for.”
Another one of Crowder’s policies on attendance is the Never Attend Policy. “Failure to attend classes by the Financial Aid Census Date, may result in administrative drop with no guaranteed re-entry.” This one isn’t as common, and therefore isn’t known as well.
A key point to this policy is the “no guaranteed re-entry”, does this go for the other policy as well? A student can request reinstatement in Administrative Withdrawal, but what is the deciding factor?
“Usually, the Academic Affairs office will contact us and ask if we have any reason to not want the student back in the class.” A Crowder instructor explained. In most cases, the student is let back in the class pretty shortly after the withdrawal.
Even with the reinstatement, there can be residual effects of the withdrawal. It can affect a student’s financial aid, by the amount given, reducing future amounts, or even necessitating repayment of aid that has already been given. Now, you would assume that something so potentially detrimental to a student’s finances would be closely monitored. Yet, one student had a different experience.
This student was withdrawn from their class after their instructor simply pressed the wrong button on attendance. “Apparently, my professor made a mistake in the attendance and counted me absent for both an excused (school activity) and unexcused (car trouble/weather) absences.” The student then received an email informing them of the withdrawal and giving them 7 days to contact Academic Affairs. Luckily, the office was able to correct the mistake, but not after worrying and putting stress on the student.
“I lost sleep over something that was fixed minutes after I received the email.” Yet, they didn’t know it was fixed until they called the next day. They were simply notified of this through an email, something that not all students check, or have constant access to.
Another student makes the case of student health. “If a student is participating in online activities or Zoom meetings, they shouldn’t have to be kicked out of class. Doing so is unfair to those with physical and mental illnesses that prevent them from going to class.” This is something many agree with and some even experience.
“Personally, I have chronic migraines and sometimes I cannot get up in the morning for my classes. Penalizing students for missing a class, over something they have no control over, is just going to discourage students from ever coming back to college and finishing their degree.” A student explains their personal mental health struggles, as they too have had issues with the attendance policy.
“I think the attendance policy is dumb. It can be better. We as adults have stuff come up that causes us to not come to class sometimes and they need to recognize that.” No matter what the reason, there are just some instances where students cannot make it to class. A class mind you, that they are paying for. The class is payed for either way, and if they are doing the work and communicating with the instructor, does it really matter if they miss a few classes?
All in all, something needs to change. As many students have said, the policy could be so much better. There shouldn’t be such a tight knit policy over something many people can’t control. Even so, isn’t the student punishing themselves in a way, by not attending a class they’re paying for?
Who is the policy really benefiting? The students who show up sick to class because they couldn’t miss any more days? Or the instructor who has just one more person they have to help and attend to? Because it definitely isn’t helping the students who can’t stop their lives and problems to attend a class that they probably don’t need anyway.
Leave a Reply