Attendance and Class Participation Policy
- The College of Law faculty recommends that each professor inform students of the following policy during the first week of class. Failure to do so, however, shall not prevent its application as provided below.
- The College of Law expects students to attend classes regularly, complete assignments in a timely manner, and be prepared for class. A student may be (1) dropped from a course, or (2) refused permission to continue to be enrolled in a course, to take the final examination in a course, or to otherwise complete a course, for any of the following reasons: (a) an excessive number of absences, (b) an excessive number of instances of not completing class assignments or not completing them in a timely manner, or (c) an excessive number of instances of not being prepared for class. Unexcused absences in excess of ten percent of the regularly scheduled classes in a course shall be considered an excessive number of absences for purposes of this section.
- Before a professor drops a student from a course or refuses a student permission to continue to be enrolled in a course, to take the final examination, or to otherwise complete a course, the professor shall provide adequate notice to the student. A professor may provide adequate notice to the student in either one of two ways: (1) by giving a reasonably detailed notice to the entire class at the beginning of the semester that students may be dropped from the course or denied permission to take the final examination or otherwise complete the course for any of the reasons listed above, or (2) by providing notice to an individual student who is in danger of being dropped from the course or refused permission to otherwise complete the course.
- Notice to the entire class may be given by a written statement in the course syllabus explicitly notifying students that failure to attend class, to be prepared for class, or to complete assignments in a timely manner may result in a professor's dropping the student from the course or in the student being refused permission to take the final examination or otherwise complete the course. In such case, no further notice is required, and no individual notice is necessary.
- If a professor has given notice to the entire class as provided above, the professor may, but is not required to, give individual notice to a student before dropping that student from the course. Notice to an individual student may be provided by sending the student a notice to the student's mailing address on file with the College of Law Registrar indicating the following: that the student will be dropped from the course if the student has not, within ten days from the date of mailing of the notice, demonstrated to the Professor's satisfaction the student's intention to participate fully in the class activities for the remainder of the semester. Thereafter, no additional prior notice is required before dropping the student from the course if the student fails to complete any requirement for the course, including attending class.
- When a student is dropped from a course before the end of the 3rd week of class in the fall or spring semesters or the 1st week in a Summer Session term, the course will be deleted from the student's record at the end of the semester or term. When a student is dropped, or refused permission to take the final examination or otherwise complete the course, later than that, a grade of "W" shall be entered on the student's record.
- A professor may adopt a more stringent policy on class attendance than that contained above if the students are given notice.
- An instructor who intends to make class participation a specific percentage of the final grade in a course shall indicate to the class at the beginning of the semester what percentage of the final grade will be based on class participation. If a given percentage is not established and announced at the beginning of the semester, class participation may only directly be taken into account for purposes of raising the final grade of a particular student or students; in that case, a student's final grade may not be increased by more than one letter grade. The mandatory/mean curve shall be applied after taking class participation into account, even though adjustments for class participation may have the indirect effect of lowering some students’ grades.
- Unless approved by the appropriate University or College official as a responsible accommodation of a disability, illness, or emergency, students may not audio or video-tape, stream, or by any other method (electronic, digital, or otherwise) capture or transmit class sessions without the prior approval of the course instructor. Even when approved, in no case shall students make copies of, distribute to others, or otherwise disseminate in any manner such capture or transmission of class sessions without the further express written permission of the instructor.
Updated: 08/11/2010