Pete Moye’
Opinion Button
With the current state of the budget in this country, it is now more important than ever to utilize the full potential of every single financial resource that we have available to us.
The Cerritos College Administration needs to implement a “no return policy” when it comes to students dropping classes.
If students enroll in a class, they need to be forced to either keep the class and continue their education, or drop the class and receive a failing grade as soon as the class is dropped.
As Cerritos continues to eliminate classes in an attempt to be in compliance with our state’s financial crisis, students are noticing more and more frequently that the amount of classes are significantly decreasing.
Students are being forced to take any class that they can get, or live on a hope that they will be able to petition a class with hopes that someone will drop, allowing that student that desires the class an option of taking it.
The problem is that students seem to be extremely “gung ho” initially about taking a class.
Students show up on the first day of the semester unwilling to move, bend, or break pertaining to other students that wish to take the class, but that overexcited zeal soon wears off, and the same students that were 100 percent confident about the passion of taking a specific class are now the same ones that drop the class.
They leave an open seat that could have been occupied by a sincere and truly motivated student.
Cerritos College student Courtney Brewer commented on the possibility of penalizing students for dropping classes by saying, “You should have a “W” even if you drop in the first couple days.”
However, having a “W” on a student’s transcript basically only says that the student changed their mind. In fact, it doesn’t even affect the GPA’s.
Cerritos College Administration needs to do more about this problem. There needs to be a true penalty for dropping classes.
Much like the laws in our country, we are mindful of the things that we do and don’t do because of the consequences associated with them. We know that there is a punishment that comes along with disobeying the law. What makes Cerritos College students any different? Cerritos College needs a viably enforceable law that would prohibit students from dropping classes without punishment. Much like those of us that are parents; we have rules and expectations that we expect our children to adhere to and if they don’t, there are consequences.
In a survey with 10 Cerritos College students, 60 percent of the students said that they are in favor of some type of punishment, 20 percent said that they are not in favor of such an ideal, and 20 percent said that they are in favor of some type of punishment “within reason.”
Theater Arts and Computer Science major Jose Za Zueta said, “If students show patterns of dropping classes consistently then they should be given a penalty, or at least given less priority for enrollment in the future.”
There are times when we all have to drop classes. Maybe there is an emergency. Maybe there are financial restrictions as to why we can’t take a class. It is possible that the student attends the class on the first day and realizes that the expectations for the class are more than the student is able to commit. These are all understandable reasons but when is enough, enough?
