Excusing personal absences justified

Upon turning 18, students suddenly can register to vote, enlist in the army, apply for a credit card and be sent to an adult prison. However, becoming an adult does not include the simple right of excusing yourself from class.

As seniors prepare for college and enter the adult world, they should be treated as adults and practice exercising discretion by having the right to excuse their own absences in a responsible way.

According to the school policy, all students who miss school must have an adult sign off on a permission form. Even then, they are only allowed to excuse all-day illnesses, not individual appointments.

While seniors may arguably exploit the rule to get out of individual classes without parental permission, they need to have opportunities to practice resisting temptation and exercising discretion.

If seniors are caught ditching excessively, they obviously will be punished. Furthermore, it is better if they learn the lesson earlier rather than later, as consequences for lying and ditching obligations are much heavier post-high school. After all, high school is a natural transition period where mistakes and lessons are expected to be made and learned before students must survive on their own.

“If you’re on a leash and all of a sudden you’re let loose, you’re going to do stupid things,” senior Ariel Tabachnik said.

The school should not attempt to shelter seniors who are legally adults. In the real world, once someone turns 18, responsibilities naturally increase as do the consequences of his or her actions.

“If you’re able to be drafted and go to war you should be able to excuse yourself from school,” senior Josiah Loh said.

Many seniors also feel that they are largely independent in overseeing their own schedules, and preventing students from excusing their own absences is a hassle for both students and their parents.

“I personally make my own appointments,” Ariel said. “Because my mom doesn’t manage my appointments she often doesn’t know when they are and forgets to call in, so I might as well call in.”

The school rule does have its purpose. Students may be prone to abusing this responsibility and call themselves out of class for no reason, as physical age may not always correlate with mental maturity, and turning 18 does not mean everyone is ready for the responsibility that entails.

“As long as you are enrolled in high school, your parents should be involved,” counselor Perla Pasallo said. “As an educator, I care that your parents and you have a relationship where they know where you are, and I think sometimes at that age you might abuse it in a school.”

It is true that seniors who turn 18 may abuse the responsibility if given the freedom to excuse their own absences. However, this lesson of time management is important to be learned before seniors leave to live entirely on their own.

If the number of excused periods is limited to a set number of 15, similar to the tardy and unexcused absence policies, it would serve as an effective transition, where the lesson of time management would be learned while preventing an excessive abuse of this privilege.

“As legal adults we should be given the responsibility to excuse ourselves from class,” senior Kevin Wang said. “Even if we may abuse it, it’s better that the lesson is learned now than when we are in college and our actions would have much more serious consequences.”