The attendance policy on the given syllabus for ENC1101 was notoriously soft. Students could whimsically skip with no repercussion for their truancy in sight. The syllabus allowed for recoil at semester’s end via class participation, but that 8% don’t scare nobody.
Without needed to say so, this leniency was taken advantage of. Chronically in some cases. And this bothered me heavily until mid-November when a pattern of quality of work and resulting grade started developing correlations with these absences. The flighty birds were coming home to a nest in ruin. Surprisingly, not a lot of absentee feathers were ruffled by the revelation (possibly expectation?), which was okay–although I was fully prepared to engage a debate over what’s fair in a domain where I decide the fairness. Only one student (the most consistent skipper, who at the semester’s beginning said to me “I just won’t be here sometimes.” disregarding any implicit “whys”) raised heavy concerns about the state of her grade. It was almost a letdown how easily diffused her strife was after telling her the last two essays (that she’s yet to pick up) were scored lower than her first two because my expectations had risen–and that this is something she’d know if she were present for the lessons or picked up her critiqued work.
The lesson, I suppose, is that attendance regulates itself in most cases.