For the past eight weeks, I have been bouncing between being healthy and being sick. Along with COVID-19, our campus is battling the usual Binghamton plague, or “frat flu” season. For years, we have pushed ourselves to attend class while running fevers or coughing our lungs out, but during the tail end of a pandemic, this is obviously not the best idea. More students are staying home to deal with their illnesses without having to worry about spreading germs or getting weird stares in Lecture Hall 1 after having a coughing attack. But this of course harms attendance and participation points. If I’m sick, how am I supposed to stay home and take care of myself and others while my grades suffer due to clicker quizzes and attendance points? Punishing students for staying home when sick is ridiculous and unproductive during these challenging times.
To begin, it’s important to break down why regular attendance is important. Students who attend classes on a normal basis show higher academic achievements than students who do not have regular attendance. It has also been proven that students who attend class less are more likely to drop out or participate in negative activities. So, in other words, when you are healthy and able, attending class is important. But attending school while sick is not helping you. You are more likely to perform poorly on exams and class work while ill, and paying attention is out of the question when you can’t breathe from your nose. But in our eyes, the consequences of missing class outweigh the problems of going in while sick.
It probably started when you were younger, with perfect attendance awards in elementary school or even fines for being absent too many times. These rewards and punishments have ingrained a “soldiering through” attitude in most of us. Who cares if we have a 101-degree fever — we need to attend a lecture! And if students do need to miss class, they might be required to get a doctor’s note, which is difficult to come by if you can’t afford an urgent care visit. So we have hundreds of students in classes spreading these illnesses, because we are unable to take a break. This strength mentality our society has is making us destroy our physical and mental health. This is a huge issue in our education system.
Another reason we force ourselves to attend class while being sick are the dreaded participation points. I have had multiple classes during my years at BU that gave participation points based on clicker questions or meaningful contributions to group discussions. I can tell you from personal experience that attempting to get a chemistry clicker question correct while sweating out a fever is not helpful to my learning. I am not taking in any information and will probably get the question wrong, leading to a reduction of points. Basically, we are being punished academically even if we do show up to class sick. Way to keep our infection numbers down! Also, students who do take the time to get better at home lose points for not participating or not answering these questions. A columnist at The Exponent at Purdue University writes that this can mean “a five-point deduction or, in some cases, a whole letter grade deduction” for being sick. In summary, you lose points for taking a sick day no matter what, and could even fail the class.
These policies and attendance guidelines are impossible in our new COVID-19 world. Many professors at BU have strict absence policies that are useless during a 10-day isolation period. If you have an understanding professor, you are lucky, but many students are suffering because of a lack of new rules over how many absences are allowed. Many professors may not be offering online options for sick students or immunocompromised individuals. Going to class while possibly infected with the virus leads to major spread and is extremely dangerous to these immunodeficient classmates. With the world getting back to normal, the last thing we need is John Doe from our history lecture infecting the entire lecture hall. Not to mention, many students have chronic illnesses that prevent them from attending class. These students can’t work with a three-day absence policy, and professors need to understand this.
To students: stay home if you’re sick. Take the break your body is begging for. To professors and administrators, this is not the time to think your class is more important than an individual’s health. Let students take sick days without penalties or doctor’s notes. We are tackling this pandemic together. Let’s finish this out strong, without germ-infested lecture halls and classrooms.
Nicolette Cavallaro is a junior majoring in integrative neuroscience.