P r o f e s s o r_ P o t t s

Valparaiso University School of Law requires that students attend every class in every course. Law school accreditation mandates this requirement. The attendance rule, of course, is not applied without including within it what passes in legal discussion as a rule of reason.

Personally, I come from the view that concern with attendance is M-i-c-k-e-y M-o-u-s-e. I come from that view, but I have arrived at a different view. Regretably, a few students taught me that I was wrong.

I'd like to explain. The view circulated at my undergraduate school that a student was allowed to challenge a course. It was not that a student could enroll but not show until the exam. Rather, a student could declare a challenge and arrange to take a final exam without taking the course. That is an interesting idea, but we do not have such a system.

With heavy heart, I once assigned the grade AW to a student after he had taken the final exam. He was a graduating third-year student until I assigned him the grade AW. If he had received the grade F, he would have graduated under the rules at the time. But with the AW, he could not and did not gradute that semester. He did not have enough attempted credits. (He graduated soon thereafter)

It was only after I was handed the exams and counted them that I learned that someone who was enrolled for credit had not attended. I had one more exam than students on the class list as far as I could tell. I took the list to the registrar to figure out why. There was a student on the list with an A next to his name. I had taken it to mean Audit. The registrar informed me that the computer system had changed. An A previously meant Audit, but it then meant Add. The student had added the course.

Only ladies had taken Corporate & Partnership Taxation that semester. This was unusual, but providential. The student with an A next to his name was a gentleman. Thus, it was absolutely clear to me that he had not been there, which, to his credit, he admitted.

The point of this story is that I will assign an AW if I am forced to do so (although I will not enjoy it). Do not read the story as meaning it takes complete nonattendance to trigger an AW. I have also assigned an AW in lesser cases, but never so late in the4 semester.

Some people want to know how many classes they can miss. The answer is contained in the law school policy stated above. I do not have authority to waive it. But as I intimated above, we are reasonable people; if you have a problem, work with me and I'll work with you. If you are having problems that interfere with attendance, talk to me about the situation early.

Please do not let lack of attendance become a problem.