At last week’s meeting, Dean of Students Kellie Raffaelli brought a proposal before the University Senate, which would change how excused absences work. This will likely be the first of many changes to the Dean’s office’s policies.
This proposal removes COVID-specific language, making COVID like any other illness in terms of excused absences. It also adds deadlines to request an excused absence, and limits the situations for which an excused absence can be requested from the Dean’s office.
Raffaelli said that they were having trouble dealing with the amount of requests, noting that, “Last year, we processed 1,270 excused absences; and really, a lot of that is because the policy is unclear.” The office can get up to 20 requests a day.
With this proposal, excused absences for an extenuating circumstance will require documentation and must cause the student to miss class for three or more days or miss a major assignment and/or examination. The definition of “major assignment” will be left up to faculty.
Raffaelli explained, “The way the policy is currently written, it says ‘or any other graded assignment’, which is open to interpretation and the students are telling me that they’re confused. The faculty are telling me that they’re confused, and we would like the faculty to have more ownership of those decisions instead of the Dean of Students.”
The hope is that this proposal, if enacted, will reduce the amount of absences the Dean’s office has to process and that most smaller cases, which don’t involve student’s personal information, will be handled between faculty and students. Raffaelli also stated that the website will soon be updated to make it clearer how to request excused absences for different situations.
