Let­ter from the Ed­i­tor

Greet­ings friends,

Across Bethel’s cam­pus, new posters have ap­peared that in­form stu­dents they have paid $72 for each 50-minute class and $108 for each 80-minute class. The posters use these facts to en­cour­age stu­dents to avoid skip­ping classes. This en­cour­age­ment is a good re­minder and can be help­ful in giv­ing tired stu­dents that lit­tle ex­tra bit of mo­ti­va­tion they need to main­tain their at­ten­dance. 

How­ever, it is also im­por­tant to re­mem­ber that, al­though this may be what the num­bers boil down to, what stu­dents are truly pay­ing for is an ed­u­ca­tion. While class in­struc­tion is cer­tainly a key piece of this, stu­dents will some­times face un­avoid­able con­flicts or dif­fi­cult men­tal health days that ne­ces­si­tate skip­ping classes. If a stu­dent has just re­ceived dev­as­tat­ing news or is fac­ing a chal­leng­ing men­tal ob­sta­cle, they are un­likely to gain any­thing from class at­ten­dance be­yond ex­pe­ri­enc­ing fur­ther emo­tional drainage. 

Ad­di­tion­ally, how are stu­dents sup­posed to re­act when class is can­celed by the pro­fes­sor? Al­though some pro­fes­sors will pro­vide an as­sign­ment to do or a short video to watch to at­tempt to re­place the 50 or 80 min­utes of in­struc­tion that have been lost, some do not. As with stu­dents, these can­cel­la­tions are some­times un­avoid­able, but one would think that Bethel would have plans in place to ac­com­mo­date this. Af­ter all, stu­dents in kinder­garten through twelfth grade are well-used to sub­sti­tute teach­ers. Why should col­lege be any dif­fer­ent?

There are sev­eral ways Bethel could con­sider im­ple­ment­ing backup plans to avoid jip­ping stu­dents of ben­e­fi­cial class time. Pro­fes­sors could be re­quired to com­pile a short list of avail­able videos that are rel­e­vant and ed­u­ca­tional con­cern­ing class ma­te­r­ial and that some­one could eas­ily be asked to go in and play for stu­dents. Many pro­fes­sors have teach­ing as­sis­tants that could be asked to ei­ther teach a class or at least fa­cil­i­tate a class dis­cus­sion. And con­sid­er­ing the amount that the stu­dents are pay­ing to be in that class, it seems rea­son­able that, in those cases when a pro­fes­sor can give ad­vance warn­ing but is un­able to pro­vide a sub­sti­tute them­selves, the uni­ver­sity should be able to bring in a rel­e­vant guest speaker.

Fur­ther­more, I have ex­pe­ri­enced two classes in which, due to dras­tic events be­yond the con­trol of the pro­fes­sors, more classes were can­celed than I would have been al­lowed to per­son­ally choose to skip with­out aca­d­e­mic con­se­quences. This seems es­pe­cially un­fair to stu­dents and un­just of the in­sti­tu­tion to not step in and as­sist in en­sur­ing that we re­ceive the ed­u­ca­tion we are pay­ing for.

In con­clu­sion, while I agree whole­heart­edly that stu­dents should at­tend every class they are able to, I also en­cour­age stu­dents to take the time they need to pri­or­i­tize their men­tal health, and I ad­mon­ish the uni­ver­sity to re­con­sider what­ever pol­icy it may or may not cur­rently have for when pro­fes­sors must can­cel their classes.     

Sin­cerely yours,

Bri­anna R. Dens­more

Ed­i­tor-in-Chief