The Student Senate passed a resolution on Monday night to support the implementation of a University-wide, force-drop policy that would make professors responsible for dropping students who miss the first two days of class.Senator Amber Joyner, senior in political science, said the purpose of Resolution 79 was to make sure class seats are filled by students who want to be in class. She said the University has cut many courses due to budget constraints and it is often difficult for students to get into the courses they need to graduate.”The Senate is not trying to pull over anything on students,” she said. “The purpose is to be proactive in catching students who aren’t investing in their education.”Joyner said that if students who do not attend class are dropped after the first week, then other students will have time to fill the seats that open up before the cut-off date for adding a class passes.Resolution 79 was passed by a vote of 27 for, 6 against and 3 abstaining.According to the resolution, approximately 400 students per semester fail their classes by not ever attending.  Julie Mallette, director of the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid, said 193 of those students last semester were receiving financial aid.Mallette said that enrolled students receiving federal aid, who fail all of the classes they take in a given semester, are of special concern to the Office of Financial Aid. She said the federal government requires the University to provide documentation within 30 days of the end of the semester that those students were attending classes.If the University fails to provide documentation proving that those students attempted the courses they enrolled in, the government can withhold financial aid funds from the University, Mallette said.Documentation of these students is very difficult to get within 30 days of the end of the semester,  Mallette said. The Senate’s proposed force-drop policy would provide that documentation earlier in the semester.”This policy would be helpful to everybody,” she said. “With limited dollars, we can’t afford to risk the University’s ability to participate in Federal aid programs.”According to University Regulation 02.20.3, teachers of 100- and 200-level courses are already required to keep a record of attendance throughout the semester.”It shouldn’t be a burden to professors to take attendance for the first two days of class,” said Joyner. Robert Kochersberger, an associate professor of English, said he thought a force-drop policy was a “particularly good idea” right now because classes are full and there is pressure on enrollment.”It’s an appropriate way to make sure we’re making use of seats,” he said.On the contrary, Erik Skau, a senior in physics, said he was unsure about having a force-drop policy.”The first couple of days of a lot of classes are worthless,” he said. “Maybe it would be better to just implement a force-drop policy for freshmen.”Joyner said she brought the idea to the Senate’s Academic Policy Committee after participating in a discussion that took place in a University committee working to improve the transition students make their first to second year. Resolution 79 was not meant to be a draft of actual academic policy, Joyner said, but instead a recommendation to the University from students to institute a force-drop policy similar to the policy already used by the College of Management.Now that the resolution has passed the Senate, Joyner and the chair of the Senate Academics Committee will begin the process of turning the resolution into real academic policy, she said. They will work out the details with Registration and Records and the Division of Undergraduate Academic Programs over the course of the rest of the semester.