You have a sudden migraine in the morning before class that puts you in bed all day. Or maybe for some other reason you just cannot make it to class that day.

Whatever the reason, a DU professor may not excuse you even if you e-mail your professor and have a good reason, your grades may go south.

But should attendance be mandatory in college? Isn’t required attendance something that we all experienced back in high school, when the school would call your home just to make sure you were actually sick and not just playing hookey?

College is not required for people. We come here because we choose to and pay big bucks to do it.

In theory we are all adults and capable of looking out for ourselves. So why is attendance such a big deal on DU’s campus?

One student, after being asked his opinion, replied that at the beginning of every class the professor immediately drills into the class how attendance is required, sometimes several times a lecture.

Another student said that her professor tries to change up how she passes around the attendance sheet in an attempt to catch students off guard.

One student told me that he was leaving class at the same time as another student to go to the bathroom and both were interrogated as to why they were leaving.

Is this just a power trip or is it a case of parenting gone wrong?

I had a professor at another university simply tell the class on the first day that he didn’t give a damn if you came to class or not.

He still got paid if you weren’t there and he was going to cover topics in class that were not in the book, and if you didn’t come to class you would fail, and so in essence it was your problem not his.

I mean, if you are somehow God’s greatest gift to math and you don’t need to go to class, should your grade be lowered if you ace every test?

One student told me his dad works for another university’s administration and that a strict attendance policy is required by the administration, because if students don’t come to class, their grades go down.

If grades go down, students fail classes, not as many students graduate, which in turn hurts the school’s reputation.

Whatever the reason may be, welcome to high school, class.