Terrible Student Excuses

At Concurring Opinions (May 21) Dave Hoffman notes that “one particularly irritating variant of unprofessionalism is terrible excuses for trivial offenses.” His partially successful solution: “Indeed, I provide students free participation passes (a limited number in some classes, unlimited in others), but explicitly tell them not to tell me why they are passing.”

Following the posting are several interesting comments. Here’s one: “The oddest reason I ever got was from a student who told me he couldn’t come to class because he had tickets to an IU basketball game. Dude, make up a cover story!”

 (ljs)