The Petition

Today, the faculty members at Hillsborough Community College have the right to mark you absent for class, even for only being 5 minutes late. This means if you are an A+ student, you risk the chance of lowering your GPA due to having too many marked absences in class. We, the student body of HCC, cannot allow this power to be mistreated by the individual faculty members any longer. This policy is being abused on a daily basis without your knowledge. If you are stuck in traffic, or need to go to the bank, or cannot get out of work on time and have to show up 20 or even 30 minutes late to class, the teacher can mark you absent for the entire class. You may not know it, but you could have a pile of absences stacking up; even if you are getting an (A) in the class, your final grade could be a (B) due to a policy that does not make sense. Some faculty members are reasonable and understand college life, while others feel that college is a full time job and you should be there for every second. Teachers should not have the right to mark you as absent just because they are having a bad day. If you are late, you are not absent. Being absent should not constitute you receiving a lower grade. If you can miss a few classes and turn in all of the assignments, then you should get whatever grade you earned. Student’s lives are busy. We should have the right to turn in an assignment without having to be in every class, and still be able to earn the same grade as if we were in every class. We paid for the right to receive an education. We did not pay to be treated like high school students, and have to choose between keeping a job or suffering in school. Mr. Travis Meek (a program manager for part time teachers at HCC) told me, "If you cannot get out of work on time to get to school then you should quit your job.  I quite a few jobs while going to college."  How would we be able to afford school without a job to afford life?

We, the student body of HCC, will not stand by while this outrageous policy is in the hands of the faculty. We demand that Hillsborough Community College removes the attendance policy from the class room at once, and that all prior absences due to tardiness be removed from the student's record. It is not right to lie about a student by saying they were not in class when they only missed part of it. This kind of policy is an abomination to the education system; and by removing it, we will be one step further in the right direction.

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