University and classroom policies are among my favorite things to analyze. They seem to be misguided and exacerbate situations they aim to fix. As a result, taking the rules of college life and applying them to the rest of the world yield some interesting results.
If you don’t show up to class enough times you get a penalty towards your grade. This is a class you paid for. You are already missing the benefit of getting the material first hand, yet the the fines continue to pile up.Imagine paying $800 for a plane ticket and hotel rooms and then not going on the trip. Since you missed more than 10 percent of your flight and stay, you get charged $80. This is the same concept as missing a portion of class time and getting penalized by going down a letter grade.
Occasionally someone needs to leave during class. I’ve been a student for a while and I’ve gotten good at tuning out the sound of the door. And if I really don’t want to be distracted, I sit in one of the ever-empty front row seats. Once a semester, however, there seems to be one teacher that halts class every time to call out how disruptive that noise was. This is similar to when I see someone leave during a movie at the cinema. I also like to stand up in front of the screen and let everyone know just how distracting that was and how much better I am for not drawing attention away from the show.
Whenever the university goes on vacation, it has a habit of kicking students out of the residence halls. When I was living in Texas, I rented out the spare rooms of my house. I guess I should have been kicking my tenants out every time I went on a road trip.
The university also seems to prefer the "use it or lose it" policy when it comes to meal plans. This seems to be forcing students to buy food and drinks they don't actually need or watch their money go to waste. I guess if other consumable services such as electricity or water followed this same plan, I’d be forced to leave my lights on and water running so I didn’t waste anything.
When we consider that students are paying customers, most policies become tragically misguided. And aside from credit cards, I’m having a hard time coming up with services that penalize me for a lack of participation.The university should take a closer look at how it prepares students for the outside world. Not everything works as implied.