Excuses For Missing Class

Professor Mike Adams (Eastern Connecticut State University) has written a paper titled, "The Dead Grandmother/Exam Syndrome and the Potential Downfall Of American Society."  As he notes, "A student's grandmother is far more likely to die suddenly just before the student takes an exam, than at any other time of year...Overall, a student who is failing a class and has a final coming up is more than 50 times more likely to lose a family member than an A student not facing any exams."

There seems to be a trend toward asking for "proof" from students who claim a death in the family.  I'm curious as to whether other professors require this.  I give my students two "personal days" during the semester to use as they wish so that I don't have to judge the validity of their excuse for missing class.

Comments

[Lex]

If you get doctor's note, do you check the legitimacy of the document by calling the doctor, or do you trust in the legitimacy without checking?

Thank You!

[Dubious]

Regarding that study, it seems like the following has been overlooked: The only time when students would have a REASON in the first place to inform their professors of a relative's death is IF they have an exam or project approaching. Why else would students need to tell their professors about something like this? Therefore, it makes perfect sense that professors will be INFORMED of these things much more frequently during exam time than any other time.

Speaking of which, I definitely side with the students on this one...I think professors are unjustified in FORCING students to take an exam on a certain day, and of course this is what has instigated the whole "dead grandmother" excuse in the first place. Given that the purpose of an exam/project is to evaluate a student's MASTERY of a subject, I don't think it is a crime nor a breach of academic integrity to allow a student a FEW EXTRA DAYS to study if he/she is not ready on the scheduled date. If Johnny has an organic chemistry exam on the same day that his 10 page history paper is due, how is it fair to compare his performance to that of students who only had to study for the organic chemistry test?? Professors always claim "it's not fair" to allow extra days, so then tell me...what is fair for Johnny in this case??? If he happened to be in the other organic chemistry section which is having their test the following week, then he would have aced his test, but because he registered for this section, he has to fail his test?? That seems very arbitrary to me, not to mention unfair. Of course, in order to prevent students from being completely irresponsible and postponing their exams indefinitely due to perpetual hangovers, it is very reasonable to penalize students by maybe 5 or 10 or 20 points depending on how late they are, but the penalty should not be so great that is distorts the grade's representation of the student's subject mastery. Most students don't want more than a few extra days, and given that the material pertaining to the exam probably took over a month to cover, I think a few days is statistically insignificant. For example, if the scope of an exam took 40 days to cover, and a student needs an extra 2 days to study, this is just 5 percent extra days relative to the scheduled date. I think 5 percent is well within a reasonable "margin of error", and math and science professors should understand that, if no one else.