Law School Attendance Already Mandatory

To the editors:

In the article, "Law School Reacts to Truancy Crackdown" (News, Feb. 11), The Crimson erred in reporting that the members of the Legal Education Committee "voted last Friday in favor of a new, mandatory class attendance policy at the Law School." In fact, we voted on no such thing.

The Law School has had in place for some time a "mandatory" class attendance policy. The 1997-1998 catalog contains the following language: "Classwork is essential to the educational program at the Law School. Regular attendance at classes and participation in classwork are expected of all students." The wisdom of this "mandatory" attendance policy was not at issue in the Legal Education Committee's deliberations last semester.

Indeed, the only issue before the Legal Education Committee was whether the administration of the attendance policy required reform. Specifically, it became apparent that the administrative requirement that a student receive written notice of his or her attendance policy violation before any disciplinary action may be taken rendered the attendance policy ineffective in some cases and functioned generally so as to make the policy's enforcement inequitable.

For example, students who had moved out of state and who throughout the semester failed to remain in contact with the Law School community became immune from disciplinary action upon their return to Cambridge at the end of the semester because no written notice had been actually received. In other cases, students whose truancy had been detected only very late in the semester (and thus who had missed a very large percentage of class meetings) were given the opportunity to "cure"--but cure what? The policy already had been violated at that point. Thus, the written notice requirement effectively permitted students to evade and attendance policy which, at some prior date, had been implemented for presumably sound policy reasons.

To prevent this administrative oversight, the Legal Education Committee voted to eliminate the individual written requirement. In its place, the Committee proposed language (and drafted guidelines) which provided general notice of the meaning behind the (previously implemented) attendance policy: any student missing more than roughly 25 to 30 percent of classes may be considered in violation of the attendance policy.

Ultimately, then, the change in the attendance policy at the Law School is not as significant as one might think. The recent change only serves to make possible the enforcement of this longstanding attendance policy. While the merit of "mandatory" attendance may be questioned, that debate has been left for another day. DAVID M. STRINGER   Feb. 12. 1998

The writer is a member of the Legal Education Committee of Harvard Law School.