Ableist Attendance Policies: An Investigation of SUNY New Paltz

By: Addie Gerber

Every new semester of college brings about a feeling of anxiety for me; especially the first week. For able-bodied students, the nerves that surround them are often basic worries: Will my classes be hard? Are my teachers going to like me? The experience for a student with a chronic disability is often more complex. Other than the general nerves many students look forward to the first week of class, commonly referred to as syllabus week, because there is usually no work other than going over syllabi. This can be overwhelming for disabled students. There is anxiety that comes with being handed a syllabus. It is ingrained in me to automatically flip to the last page, to the section that will give me insight to whether or not I will enjoy the class: the attendance policy. When you have a chronic disability, it is not uncommon to have to miss classes repeatedly throughout a semester. As there is no concrete set attendance policy for SUNY New Paltz, professors are essentially allowed to create their own. This causes unfair situations for students with disabilities.  Ableism is the discrimination or prejudice against someone for the fact that they have a disability, and the  Cambridge Dictionary defines ableist as “treating people unfairly because they have a disability”. Attendance policies are inherently ableist because they do not provide fair opportunities to people with disabilities. 

One of the main purposes of having an attendance policy is to ensure students are putting effort into attending class and doing the necessary work. These policies also tend to recognize the value of in class interactions. However, these policies often have unintended consequences for disabled and chronically ill students. In general, most teachers will allow you  two or three absences, and after the allotted amount they begin to take points off your grade. Most New Paltz professors will drop a letter grade for every additional absence. According to the New Paltz Faculty Handbook “The number of allowed absences in a course is at the discretion of the instructor. If the instructor penalizes students for unexcused absence from class, this policy must be stated in the course syllabus” (10). This policy assumes that students choose to be absent, and while some do, this is not always the case and it is wrong to keep that thought in mind. Students with disabilities often do not have the ability to physically be present in class. To assume that all students automatically “absent themselves” invalidates a disabled student’s struggle. The Faculty Handbook goes on to say that “students who absent themselves from class, therefore, do so at their own risk, and in determining a student’s grade, the instructor may consider absences.” The tone in which is taken is condescending and invalidating to chronically ill students.  

Take Professor Cyrus Mulready’s attendance policy for Shakespeare II for example. In it he states: 

“Attendance in this course is crucial, and you will be rewarded for having either perfect, or near-perfect attendance. If you have perfect attendance or miss only one class, I will give you five extra credit points on your final exam.

Missing more than two class meetings will lower your final grade in this course as follows: 3-5 absences=1/3 grade reduction to your final grade (B to B-, for example), 6-8 absences=full grade reduction to your final grade (B to C, for example).”

The main problem with his policy is that students are rewarded for not missing class. This policy does not take disabled students who have to miss class into account. It, as stated early, treats absences as days off which is not always the case. Being rewarded for “perfect attendance” started in grade school and made its way into the world of college. Rewarding students who do not have the same challenges as those with disabilities can be viewed as simply rewarding them for the privilege of not being disabled. This needs to stop. Attendance on its own does not determine the quality of what a student is contributing to a classroom. Claire McKinney in her essay, “Cripping the Classroom: Disability as a Teaching Method in the Humanities” writes that “attendance procedures that are inflexible may communicate to students with chronic impairments that they cannot participate” (115). It causes students with disabilities to feel like they do not have a fighting chance of passing a class.

In the end, a professor might be willing to be accommodating to their disabled students, but what one puts in their syllabus matters. How can students feel comfortable communicating their limitations or challenges with a teacher who portrays him/herself as inflexible? This is an instant way to make chronically ill students feel isolated. The best course of action to solve this is to take disabled students into consideration while writing policies and having empathy but not pity. Overall, everyone who attends college does so to learn, so let us allow everyone to do so fairly; without the institution making it more difficult to do so.

 

Works Cited

“ABLEIST: Definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary.” ABLEIST | Definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary, dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/ableist.

Faculty Handbook 2018-2019. STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT NEW PALTZ, www.newpaltz.edu/media/academic-affairs/FACULTY HANDBOOK 2018-2019.pdf.

McKinney, Claire. “Cripping the Classroom: Disability as a Teaching Method in the Humanities.” Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy, vol. 25 no. 2, 2014, p. 114-127. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/tnf.2014.0024.

Mulready, Cyrus. Shakespeare II, hawksites.newpaltz.edu/fall2016eng407/course-and-college-

policies/.