Class inequality
Freezing temperatures rolled through Waynesburg last week, and students had to bear those conditions to get to classes.
While classes continued as scheduled, some resident students chose to not attend classes. However, in all reality, they had no reason to miss classes. With a maximum five-minute walk to a building across campus, some resident students still chose to not attend class and be marked for absences.
But, perhaps what they didn’t realize is that by skipping those classes, they also lose money. On a schedule of 18 credits per semester, the tuition for the university is approximately $20,000, excluding room and board. That means students pay a per-class fee of approximately $70. So by missing a class for the cold, students threw away an average of $70 per class that they missed.
Meanwhile, as resident students just chose not to attend class, some commuter students literally could not attend.
Nevertheless, commuter students were charged with absences, as if they just decided to skip, like some other resident classmates.
Under these circumstances, perhaps commuters should have been given a bit of reprieve if they couldn’t make it to their classes. But, instead, these students were penalized the same as residents. So perhaps the problem lies within class attendance policies.
Commuters only make up about 20% of the student population, so the university did not and should not have had to cancel classes campus-wide because of commuters not being able to make it.
Simply put, resident students should not be begging for snow days because they don’t want to go to class, when their commuting classmates literally could not attend even if they wanted to.
These cries for cancellations were a bit premature. Perhaps students should have waited until Monday when over six inches of snow was left untouched as morning classes began, to use their skips, or for when they have legitimate reasons to miss. Now, those skips are gone, and they won’t be coming back.