Photo: Colleen Hayes / NBC.

This course challenges each of us to share in the difficult process of understanding and evaluating important arguments concerning social justice. As a result, class attendance and your participation (both in- and outside of class) are crucial in understanding and retaining course material.

The more you are able to meaningfully engage in this class, the more you will learn and the better you may perform.

I will do my best to encourage active and productive participation during our class meetings. If you are shy, do not worry: I will not punish anyone who would rather not speak up. However, engaging in distracting behavior (sleeping in class, chatting while I am trying to lecture, using a phone or laptop without permission, leaving the classroom, doing homework for another class, and so on) may carry penalties, such as being marked as late or absent.

Meanwhile, out-of-class participation is done on the social media site Twitter. Please do look over the grading scheme for this class, which explains how participation influences your final grade in the course.

Photo: Colleen Hayes / NBC.

Attendance

Given the importance of attendance, I will take roll promptly at the start of each class meeting at 2:00PM. If you are not sitting in your seat at that time, you will be marked absent. If you show up after that—even if you are only late by 5 seconds—then you will be marked as late. However, if you show up more than 10 minutes late, you remain marked as absent.

This means that you get no “free” absences from class. There is one exception: You and I agree on a reasonable accommodation prior to the day you miss class. I will consider arrangements after the fact only in extraordinary, documented circumstances.

Students with more than 6 unexcused absences will automatically fail this course. For this calculation, 2 late arrivals will count as an unexcused absence.

Photo: Colleen Hayes / NBC.

Missing Class? Want to Excuse Your Absence?

It is extremely important that you are caught up on the course material and not falling behind. However, missing class may make doing all that extremely difficult and stressful for you.

So in order to encourage you to stay caught up on any material you might have missed due to missing class, you may do an absence make-up assignment that will excuse your absence. An excused absence does not count towards the 6 unexcused absences leading to automatic failure.

An absence make-up assignment is a write up that must answer all the assigned reading questions for the day you missed class. It is due one week after you missed class and must be sent to me via email. Let me know if you are not sure when to submit it to me.

If you demonstrate a serious and sustained attempt to answer each and every reading question, then your make-up assignment will be Accepted and your absence excused. If it is Incomplete, however, then you will need to use a free pass to revise and resubmit it.

Otherwise, your absence make-up assignment should be at least 700 words in length, use APA-style citations to cite all your sources (this includes the required course readings), acknowledge any assistance (this includes assistance received from me outside of our regular class meetings), and otherwise conform to the formatting requirements.

Please use the templates for the absence make-up assignments. These templates are set up to satisfy all the formatting requirements, including a blank cover page for you to complete.

Absence make-up assignments without a properly filled out Commitment to Academic Integrity Form will not be read and will earn an automatic Incomplete.