Memorandum

Memorandum

To: John Jay College of Criminal Justice  Faculty, Professors

From: Daniil Tatsenko, Student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (JJCCJ)

Date: February 13, 2020

Subject: Lateness and Attendance Policy

Professors often choose to enact attendance and lateness policies that are unsympathetic and unforgiving to the students in their classes. Negatively affecting the students’ grades when they are late by a few minutes, only missing the trivial starting moments of class, or absent from the class due to a possible multitude of reasons.

Students at higher education institutions know that they are no longer in high school where there are virtually no risks to being absent or late to class. Students have a right to their own discretions from day to day, from class to class, students should know the risk they take by missing covered material during classes. A professor enacting a zero tolerance policy on lateness, does little good to decrease tardiness, especially when that class may be an 8 AM. A lot of students have to commute far to get to the college, any minor bump on their transit will result in them being late to class. Attendance and lateness should not carry an explicit penalty, it should be implicit— students know that missing a lecture will result in incomplete understanding of the material and likely affect their test grade.

The solution to this is for professors to remove all explicit penalties to class absence, or at the very least— loosen qualifications for being “late”. Students who don’t want to go to class won’t burden anyone else attending. College students are responsible for their education, forcing them to attend is unnecessary. 

If this proposal is accepted, then students would feel at ease during class because they are not forced to be there by some stipulation. Thank you for your understanding and consideration of this issue. For any further discussion, you can contact me at: daniil.tatsenko@jjay.cuny.edu or reach me at (555) 555-5555.