Every year, without fail, there are at least two months where it seems everyone is sick. In every lecture hall, all you can hear is coughs and sneezing. Between classes, work, extracurriculars and studying, no one has time to get sick.
However, when we do get sick, the majority of us will still go to class. This is not because we need to hear the information but because the attendance policies oftentimes mean that skipping will result in us getting lower grades. IU needs to create a coherent attendance policy in order to allow students who are sick to stay home in order to not pass on infectious diseases.
Currently, absences are handled by individual courses. One professor may not care about absences at all, but another could knock off a third of a letter grade every time you're absent after two missed classes. We have too much variance.
On a purely epidemiological viewpoint, many common illnesses including the common cold and the flu are spread through air particles or skin contact.
This means that the chances of getting ill grow with each infected person you come into contact with. While we can never fully prevent contact with sick individuals, we can limit it.
By sitting through three 50-minute classes where it seems to me that one of every five students is coughing, we are knowingly putting ourselves in situations where we can contract infections. This should be reason enough why we shouldn’t go to class when we’re sick, even if it’s just a cold.
The majority of classes that take attendance say that a doctor’s note would qualify as an excused absence. However, this ignores some key groups of people. Oftentimes, it is not practical for students to go to the doctor. Many of the students on campus are not originally from Bloomington.
This means that they would either have to find a provider in the area and be a first time patient, go to the health center, or make the trek to the hospital. Because the hospital is not the place where the cold or flu is usually diagnosed, that really just leaves the health center as a practical way to get a medical excuse.
While some students are fortunate enough to have insurance or be on a parent's insurance, IU Health Center only accepts Blue Cross Blue Shield and Aetna Student Health Insurance.
This makes getting an excused absence much harder for students. As someone who routinely has classes where participation is at least a fifth of my grade, I feel the effect of absence-related grade reductions on my GPA. While I think that no unexcused absences are fine for exams or labs, it is entirely possible for students to catch up with readings and by going to office hours for a lecture course.
There is a limit to how much our bodies can do while we are ill, and sometimes, it is better for us to rest and not risk making ourselves or our peers sick in order to maintain our attendance points. IU needs to standardize attendance policies.
