Sneezing? Stuffy nose? Sore throat? Chills, aches, fever? Congratulations, you have stumbled right into cold and flu season. It happens every year no matter how much we are educated on how important it is to wash your hands, don’t share food and please, for the love of god, sneeze into your sleeve. You would think that would be ingrained in our brains considering how long we’ve been listening to the same sermon of personal hygiene.

But what I want to touch on here is the hypocritical advice of attendance. Now, I understand the importance of being at school. There are some things that cannot be translated onto a worksheet to send home or a reading assignment. But what I don’t understand is why it is apparently acceptable to come to school sick for the sake of keeping that record of attendance squeaky clean. This blame doesn’t go to the students because god knows that they wouldn’t be sitting in class miserably just for glory to say they have perfect attendance.

No, this one goes to the 95 percent required attendance for A+. I don’t understand why 95% attendance matters to a financial incentive for community college education. I really don’t understand why it comes before the health of the general populace. I understand the injustice that it had to be you that got sick, but really, don’t punish the rest of us.