Photo courtesy of Kamau Kegler ’27
The common cold, the most typical disease on the planet caused by rhinoviruses, plagues the bodies of over one eighth of the human population every year. Accompanied by chills, aches, coughing, runny noses, and oftentimes a low fever, the effects have been felt universally. Now, with a new school year starting back up again, the common cold and other diseases are starting to come back too. As students wrestle with school work and extracurricular activities, catching a cold simply makes their day-to-day lives even more difficult. It can quickly feel overwhelming to make up work, as assignments and rescheduled tests pile up. Sometimes, students may feel too burdened to take a sick day off due to the pressure of ever-increasing school work.
To solve this, Episcopal has adopted a more unified approach of treating all absences, no matter the reason, as absences. III Form Dean Caroline Graham comments on this approach, saying, “the idea of excused and unexcused absences got really kind of dry.” She adds, “a more structured policy where any absence is just an absence supports all the students overall.”
While this approach may have simplified administration, it has inadvertently created a grey area regarding sick day absences. Because the policy makes every absence the same, it is difficult to determine the appropriate level of leniency for any particular situation. This is especially apparent when comparing the results of minor discomforts and severe medical issues. Upper School math teacher Dr. Thomas Goebeler states, “If you’re out for a day, like come on, you can’t [get an assessment delayed].” However, he also contrasts one day leave to extended absences, adding, “If you’re out for many weeks, then it’s like you missed weeks worth of work. It should probably take you at least weeks to catch up.” Lines can be blurred by students that use minor symptoms as excuses for full-day absences, derailing the system that teachers may have already set in place for assignments and assessments. As such, students may be expected to complete the work they missed in a timely fashion.
Yet, because of this expectation and the difficulty in truly identifying what an absence was for, it can create an intense and sometimes stressful environment for students who were genuinely ill. The effects of the flu often detrimentally impact one’s ability to think. As student Annie Le ’27 shares, “The quality of your work is going to be far lower, and there are questions you have to ask [your teachers].” Furthermore, Le says, because of the “slightly unreasonable” expectation that some assignments will need to be completed immediately after returning to campus, students’ mental health can be damaged, and stress levels can increase.
However, one cannot simply blame teachers for their individual procedures. In reality, faculty members consistently strive to accommodate their students, working to help them behind the scenes and adjust deadlines if necessary. US Computer Science teacher Matthew Davis explains that his policy for students after returning from absences is simply to get the work in “by a reasonable amount of time,” instead of having a rigid deadline. This empathetic approach seems to be well received by the students of EA, with Aleksander Raue ’28 adding that teachers are often “really understanding” and work with students diligently to make sure they feel adequately caught up.
It must be understood how difficult it is for teachers to navigate all these extensions without clear guidelines to back them up. Test questions need to be remade, schedules need to be checked, and it is often just as burdensome and tiring for the teachers as it is for the student. A fair system to solve this problem must be able to prevent advantageous usage of sick days while also allowing truly ill students time to make up their work at a reasonable pace. Additionally, the policy should simultaneously support the faculty members, offering clear boundaries and guidelines on how to navigate stressful case-by-case extensions. Although a return to “excused vs. unexcused” absences is not necessary, a clear, standardized system that establishes definitive boundaries is essential to resolving this issue.