After hearing complaints from leaders of some student organizations, administrators are looking to make revisions to the University's Dean's Excuse policy.
Members of academically-based extracurricular organizations said they often face the conundrum of how to obtain excuses from classes in order to attend conferences and tournaments. Although the Dean's Excuse was created to allow students flexibility in submitting graded work, some students said more needs to be done to ensure that members of academic organizations are able to miss class without suffering the attendance-related consequences.
Duke Student Government President and Duke Debate Co-president Paul Slattery, a senior, said he began working with administrators in October to devise a plan that would excuse students in academic organizations from class when there are conflicts with conferences. The initiative stemmed from an instance where a member was not able to obtain an excuse and thus was unable to attend a debate tournament.
"The difficulty, particularly for Mock Trial or the debate team or Model [United Nations], would be that they aren't systematically excused and they therefore theoretically have to go to a dean each time a student wanted to go on a trip," he said, adding that other groups such as Duke University Marching Band or athletic teams are excused systematically.
Academic organizations were always given "a different sort of recognition than athletics," said Duke Debate Co-president Katelyn Donnelly, a senior, adding that the University should have a stronger commitment to extracurricular activities and intercollegiate competitions.
"I was in Thailand this past Winter Break and one of our teams got into the top 16 in the world out of about 400," she said. "And often these little things seem to go unnoticed when they're really such large accomplishments."
Originally, a Dean's Excuse was issued by an academic dean if a student missed class for any reason, but since its inception, revisions to the policy have narrowed its scope, Dean of Undergraduate Education Steve Nowicki explained.
"Responsibility for class attendance and completing course work on time rests with the individual student, and at times students may have difficult choices to make between fulfilling the obligations of their courses on time and engaging in extra-curricular activities that conflict with those obligations," the policy reads.
Still, Dean of Trinity College Bob Thompson said athletes are not given preferential treatment and are granted excuses at the beginning of each semester because their activities are University-scheduled. Organization activities are not planned by the University, he noted.
"It's not valuing one activity over another," he said. "It's who has control over scheduling."
But although Duke Debate has encountered trouble with Dean's Excuses, Model UN Secretary-General Jerry Chen, a senior, said his group could benefit from a policy revision but can continue to compete without it.
"We just try to make it easy for our members by having our faculty adviser write the excuses," he said.
Mock Trial President Chetan Jhaveri, a junior, also said he has never come across a situation where a student was denied an excuse from a professor, but said he would support a revision to the Dean's Excuse policy that included academic teams.
"Most teachers I know don't have a problem with it, especially if we explain what Mock Trial does," he said. "We get some of the people we work with to talk to them and we've never had a problem with the current policy because we're able to work around the official policy."
Since members of many academic organizations said an updated Dean's Excuse policy would benefit students, Donnelly said it is in the University's best interest to make the process easier for students to compete and represent Duke.
Although Slattery said he does not know exactly how the policy will be revised, he said he finds it "bizarre" that changes will not be made until next year.
Nowicki confirmed that academic deans have been asked to examine the issue. He added that Associate Dean of Trinity College Norman Keul will be active in drafting a revision to the policy. Keul could not immediately be reached for comment.
"I don't think anybody disagrees we need to figure out how to do this," Nowicki said. "It wasn't a case of how to cut out the debate team, it was just that it fell through the cracks when the policy was [first] revised."
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