Attendance for my program is not great right now. A lot of us have been sick off and on for the past four weeks, which is completely understandable. Also, in law school it's normal to skip classes on occasion for other appointments or to go out of town for the weekend. That's all fine.
However, some people in this program simply are not interested in attending classes and are regularly absent for no good reason. This is pretty frustrating considering that we have a few students who come in all the way from New Jersey every day while others would rather stay out late and sleep in the next morning with no apology.
We all had to jump through hoops to get here and we were chosen over other students. In fact, less than half of those who applied for this program were accepted into it. This information does not seem to phase certain people though and it has made no impact on these students to take the program seriously and make the most of it. It makes us all look bad and causes the work load to be much greater for those of us who actually attend classes.
Bottom line: Without looming consequences a rule has no true strength to equalize behavior. I feel that if a student's attendance is poor without good reason (illness, family, appointments, etc) that student should fail classes and possibly be kicked out of the program. They'd lose their tuition and have to repeat the credits by taking courses on campus in Buffalo. It seems that anything short of such a threat falls on deaf ears.
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