Flu season – we all dread it, but it rolls around like clockwork each year to greet the students of Iowa State just as those first big assignments and tests make their way onto our weekly calendars.

Once you’ve got the bug the most logical thing to do, not only for yourself but for the many healthy students around you, is to take a sick day. 

However, this is a route that few students choose to take as they plod their way to class day after day, tissues in hand, with a stout cough to interrupt the professor every few minutes.

Why? Because despite suggestions from the faculty class attendance policy, which asks faculty to refrain from requiring students to obtain a “class excuse” for missing class because of illness, many professors continue with the requirement anyway.

Students that are sick should stay home, but being sick does not always necessitate a trip to the doctor. Yet, some professors at Iowa State continue to make doctor’s notes required for missing class due to an illness. 

This certainly may come from the idea that there will always be those students who are “sick” when they really are just finding it difficult to pull themselves from bed that morning.

But for those who truly find themselves in the not so loving embrace of a cold or the flu, such policies make it difficult to stay home and get healthy. Especially when doing so can impact a final grade with few exceptions.

For many, an appointment at Thielen Student Health Center may seem like the answer. Student Health Center may be able to send you home with an answer to what ails you, but one thing you will not be going home with is a doctor’s note in order to be excused from class.

“With limited exceptions,” the Student Health Center’s policy is to not give “class excuses” to students. This policy coincides with the faculty policy of suggesting that professors not make obtaining a doctor’s not mandatory in order to be excused from homework deadlines and class attendance.

The faculty attendance policy asks professors to not request doctor’s notes because it “limits access to services for students who have a medical need, it also increases risk of exposure to viral illnesses among patients and staff at the health center.”

In order to keep appointments open for those with a true need of medical services, it is better to not have a large number of students vie for an appointment slot simply to obtain the coveted doctor’s note.

The best way to keep the student populace healthy is to keep those who are under the weather at home. But if staying home means uncertainty with a grade, many students will continue to make their way to class.

Removing the requirement of a doctor’s note most definitely opens the door for students to skip class for no reason, but in the end they are only harming themselves and their education. 

Professors may feel that a penalty is needed to address students that continually make excuses in order to refrain from attending class. The true penalty, and life lesson, for these students will come in the form of midterms and finals. Such class requirements also unfairly penalize students who have become sick. 

Students who are sick and spread that illness are impacting the lives of the students around them, including their learning experience. 

Professors need to heed the faculty suggestion and refrain from requiring students to go to such lengths to prove any sort of illness or the faculty senate needs to make it mandatory within faculty attendance policies that professors cannot require “class excuses” to prove illness. 

In order for all university professors and students to have the most successful semester possible, faculty needs to encourage students to stay healthy and take care of themselves, not create requirements that continue the cycle of sick students. 

This will make for a much happier, and healthier, flu season at Iowa State.