Professor Loretta Pecchioni decided last Wednesday that it was time to give her 4112 Communication Studies class real communication to study. She sent an email 15 minutes into the 10:30 a.m. class, that essentially said this: the course is cancelled for the rest of the semester, everybody flunked, and I’ll smell ya later.
And you know what? I don’t blame her for sending it. If anything, it was benevolent of her to calm down and retract her statement in a second email.
Although some consider Pecchioni’s actions less than professional — she allegedly cursed at the students in attendance — she had every right to be upset at chronic absences and an 11-person turnout in a class of 28.
Now, before we go any further, I need to come clean.
I don’t have a spotless record. My first semester at LSU, I skipped class for every inane and imaginable reason — I was tired, “Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School” was on, it looked like it might rain or it was Friday (or any weekday).
However, I’m pretty sure I ate boogers and peed in my Pampers every day as a baby too. My point is that my poor judgment in the past doesn’t exactly give me a “holier-than-thou” position in this argument, but part of growing up includes shedding bad habits.
These days I try to attend class as often as possible — even when every fiber of my being is begging me to stay in bed. Here are a few reasons why:
Skipping class is disrespectful to your professor.
Elecia Lathon, an instructor in the College of Human Sciences and Education, said, “On average I spend about five hours a week per class preparing for the classes I teach.” Likewise, Kenneth Brown, a senior level ecology professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, reported spending two to three hours preparing for every hour of lecture time.
Can you imagine spending hours on homework, only to have your teacher decide he or she isn’t interested in looking at, much less grading it? It’d be understandable if you were livid.
Lathon also mentioned that when students attend class, she’s able to monitor progress in ways that don’t include giving quizzes and tests, and students are able to give input that can enhance future lessons. Without students, this mutually beneficial relationship is impossible to establish.
If, however, you’re the type of person that doesn’t care about your professor’s delicate sensibilities, consider how regular class attendance affects you.
A meta-analytic review written by several authors affiliated with the State University of New York at Albany found class attendance in college was the best predictor of grades. Ultimately, a student’s study habits, SAT scores or high school GPA were far less important in determining their success.
Another study, published in the journal Teaching of Psychology, found that students who attended class more frequently scored higher than others on multiple-choice quizzes. These results held true even when the material being tested was covered in the text, rather than during in-class lectures.
Nevertheless, people could argue, “I pay tuition here. It’s my time and my money, and I’m at liberty to choose how I spend either of those.”
While that’s true, I still can’t imagine how regularly skipping class would be beneficial to you. Baton Rouge has its merits, but would anybody reasonably pay full tuition just to hang out here and hope for passing grades?
Or, if you’re lucky enough to receive TOPS or another scholarship, skipping class is a waste of others’ financial resources. Either way you cut it, it’s wasteful to routinely play hooky.
Regardless, the decision is still yours to make. The last Faculty Senate resolution proposing grades based on mandatory class attendance was introduced on February 14, 2012 — and as long as the problem of chronic absences remains, the proposal is likely to resurface.
We shouldn’t attend class in fear that compulsory attendance will weasel its way back into consideration, though (for the record, I’m against it). Students should minimize their absences because it shows respect for the teacher and the academic setting while significantly improving grades.
Communications professor Andrew King rightly said deciding whether to attend class is “simply part of the college experience,” but we shouldn’t be so quick to forget the advantages of attendance or why Pecchioni was so reasonably upset.
