Excuse and Makeup Policies

I'm retired from teaching, but the following was a feature of my university pedagogy:

I reserve the right to request documentation of any excuse offered as a reason for an extension of a homework deadline or for a makeup exam, for the following reasons:

• This is an elementary issue of fairness to students who comply with deadlines.

• While I'll be glad to help out a student with a legitimate reason for an extension, I do not wish to be abused via an unworthy appeal. It takes time to write makeup exams; it takes time to grade late papers. I might have planned to use that time in other ways.

Examples of documentation (which should state the date and time of the excusing event) include:

• For a medical crisis: a note from a physician or nurse

• For a death: a newspaper's obituary (some newspapers put these on the Web, in which case you could e-mail me the Web address); note from a clergyperson; program from a funeral service (your relationship with the deceased should be stated in the program)

• For a traffic accident: a police or insurance report

I regret the necessity of this policy. It may seem cruel if the excuse is a death in the family. However, every faculty member has experienced or heard of a student who "killed off" a parent only to receive a phone call from that parent a month later, or "suffered" chicken pox (normally, once-in-a-lifetime) twice, or "crashed" a car on a non-existent road, in order to obtain more time.

Unexcused Makeup Policies

Exams

A student who misses an exam without compelling excuse may request a makeup exam. My response to such a request will be one of the following:

• No.

• Yes, but your score will be substantially penalized.

Once, I allowed a student to take an unexcused makeup exam, and the student protested my intention to penalize the exam score, claiming that to do so was unfair. My response was that it was the only fair thing to do, other than refusing to give a makeup. A student who takes a makeup exam has more time to prepare than his/her classmates who have taken the regularly scheduled exam. If the student was not excused from the original exam, this advantage has been obtained unfairly.

I'd rather give students likely to pass the course a chance to do so, so I generally prefer not to grade as 0 an exam that a student is likely to do substantially better on. However, the only fair way to do so is to penalize, substantially, the student's score.

If you take an unexcused makeup exam, expect your exam grade to be computed as follows:

your score = (your unpenalized score) * 60%

Homework

In most of the courses I teach, a policy concerning late homework assignments is stated on the course syllabus. In some cases, late submissions will be allowed, with a penalty that may be less severe than that stated above for exams, but sufficient to make it worthwhile for students to meet deadlines; in other cases, no late submissions will be accepted without compelling reason. In business, "time is money," and students should be cultivating professional practices; the equivalent of "money" in this context is grades.