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Hillsdale College rightly grants professors broad freedom to address student absences, including when students are sick. Yet freedom is not license, and professors should not use their liberty to craft policies that penalize students for illness.

Our college’s policy articulates our school’s longstanding commitment to professors’ academic freedom. According to the policy, professors “design attendance policies in alignment with the college’s emphasis on student engagement” and “are not required to modify their attendance or academic policies” to address non-disabling medical issues. In the administration’s view, professors should set standards for their classes on all matters, including attendance. Since professors know their students, they are in the best position to tell if students are genuinely ill or perhaps simply trying to paper over one too many early-semester hangovers.

Given Hillsdale’s emphasis on professor-student relationships, this might make sense at first. Many professors at Hillsdale approach illness collegially without sacrificing high attendance standards by willingly excusing absences when health providers warn that a student is too ill to attend class.

However, others have more questionable policies. Some excuse absences at their discretion alone, without any mention of doctor’s notes. Other professors don’t penalize students for missing classes but instead refuse to allow students to make up missed quizzes. Still others refuse to set a policy for illness at all — choosing to allow their students a certain number of absences with no questions asked — but apply large grade deductions for further absences, even those due to illness.

These policies incentivize students not to miss class. Especially in the humanities, discussing texts at length is fundamental to the work of learning. The more consistently students engage in these dialogues, the better the education will be for all present. This is why students should attend class, and why professors set attendance standards. Here we see the professor-student relationship in action: a partnership of consistent commitment to the hard work of education.

Yet students fall ill. One may slip on the ice, break an arm, and spend the day getting a cast. Another may catch a flu strain carried by a student or professor from across the country, and even if he can physically pry himself from bed, he should refrain from attending class to prevent others from succumbing to the same fate. Neither of these students are necessarily uncommitted to the work of learning; they simply lack the capacity to show up to class. Their health has prevented them.

But if a single student is unlucky enough to fall ill or become injured multiple times during a semester, he can all too easily slip through the cracks of professors’ policies. He may miss just enough pop quizzes that the professor dropping his lowest few can’t save him. He may exceed his professor’s cap of three absences per semester, turning a respectable B into a passable C.

While it may be that professors will choose to waive their policies when they believe the consequences are unwarranted, setting a policy ostensibly without exceptions only to make exceptions on the fly is ripe for accusations of abuse. The solution to policies with unfair ramifications is better policies, not discretion, and professors should keep this in mind while setting their attendance standards.

It wouldn’t be easy to create a uniform policy on campus concerning absences. Every class, every absence, every illness, and every student are different, and the best way forward can vary between classes even for a single student in a single semester. That is why Hillsdale professors’ academic freedom is key. But professors must take care that they use that freedom well and don’t encourage unhealthy behavior. 

While the new articulation of college policy is a step in the right direction, by encouraging students and professors to work together to find the optimal approach for each situation, professors should follow the spirit of the policy — and the college — to make sure that their liberty does not become license.

Matthew Tolbert is a junior studying computer science and mathematics.