In my nearly 20 years of teaching at the university level, I have received a number of appeals from students, e.g., to offer extra credit opportunities, to turn in late assignments, to make up missed assignments, and to alter the date of the final exam. I want you to know that I am always willing to consider any of these appeals, but the likelihood that I will be able to accommodate them is very, very slim. I don’t want you to think that I am unaccommodating out of (intentional) cruelty or thoughtlessness, and so I explain below the guidelines I use for considering any student appeals. As I expect all of you to hold leadership positions one day, I believe that these guidelines will be helpful to you at some point, too.
1. fairness: I do not entertain a special accommodation for a student that I would not extend to all of my students.
So, for example, if I were to allow a student to make up a missed quiz because he/she had to work a job unexpectedly during class time, I would have to allow all students in a similar situation to make up a quiz. The same is true for extra credit: if I can’t offer extra credit to everyone, I don’t offer it to just one student. For example, I don’t offer extra credit assignments to go see a play because I wouldn’t want to privilege one student who had the means to buy a ticket over a student who didn’t. Moreover, I don’t ever sit in judgment over what is or is not an “excused absence.” I have heard every excuse imaginable over the years and still I could not tell you whether it’s more understandable to miss class because of a dying relative, a car accident, or a fever. A student once told me she had to miss class because her family needed to purchase a horse for their horse farm. All of these might be good reasons (or not) to miss class, and so I don’t differentiate. I grade performance — not intentions or prior performance.
2. high standards: If you look at the promotional literature of most universities, you will see the word “excellence” all over it. I don’t believe anyone — or any organization — ever achieves excellence without holding oneself to high standards, indeed higher standards than those you are trying to excel.
You might wonder why I don’t just drop more than two quizzes in the semester or why I don’t just not grade any missed assignments but instead grade only the assignments the student completes. You might wonder why I don’t offer students the opportunity to take the final exam on the last day of class. Doing so would make my job easier because it would be one fewer class I had to teach, and my semester would be over sooner, too. The reason I don’t do any of these things is that I am very proud to teach at Howard University and I am proud of the high caliber of students it graduates. I do whatever I can to hold students to reasonable but very high standards. I am proud to do this, but I also believe that it is my duty to do this; it’s what I’m hired to do. I’m required to report accurately and fairly every student’s performance. And we all owe it to everyone who contributes time and resources to our university to strive to be the best students and researchers we can be. In the long run our university can survive only by holding itself to high academic standards. Otherwise we become not a university but a social club.
3. my own time constraints: College and university professors are required to do more than teach.
You might wonder why I don’t just allow students to make up any missed assignment for any legitimate reason at all. It is true that I could still (1) maintain high standards and (2) be fair to all students. If my time were unlimited, I would do this cheerfully. But I teach anywhere from 80–100 students each semester for an average of 30 hours per week (I measured it using a time-tracker). I simply don’t have the time to make it possible for all students to make up missed assignments or to have extra credit opportunities to earn the grade they would like. I could certainly do this for one or two students, but my rule of fairness would mandate that I do it for everyone. I am required by Howard University to devote 40% of my time to teaching and the other 60% to research and service (e.g., serving on committees, attending conferences, and promoting the field of classics however I can). I thoroughly enjoy all of these responsibilities, but they are responsibilities that place very real limits on each other.
As I say above, I am happy to consider any and all appeals; but before you make any appeal, please try to anticipate how I will process it according to the three guidelines of fairness, high standards, and time constraints that are the necessary part of university life. Again, hopefully these standards will serve you in your own future leadership roles!
