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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

Attendance Process Part Three: Pointing and Laughing at People Who Make Attendance Reporting Mistakes


PART THREE: Pointing Our Fingers and Laughing At People Who Make Attendance Reporting Mistakes

Just when we thought we had made it through the attendance error witch-hunt, more mistake making opportunities are exposed. Maybe these will hit closer to home.

Mistake Number 5: Using someone else's MAT screen. If you have security clearance to update the MAT screen, you can do it for any MAT screen. Please try to stick to your own. For security purposes, the data is frozen after it is entered so if an entire screen is filled out in error, we need to manually back out the information one student at a time. No one is happy about that.

Mistake Number 6: Mixing up Rachel Winter and Rachel Summer with Rachel Spring. We get a lot of attendance correction forms because the right data was entered for the wrong student and, unfortunately, it was done on time for the attendance drop and the wrong student got dropped. Actual case: a 4.0 student was mistakenly dropped by all 4 professors from classes she was attending. She lost her financial aid and her TAP. Marking the wrong student absent happens a lot. Each time this happens the student appears at the R&R window in tears. Sometimes we have a line of crying people in the hallway. It looks like the balcony scene from Evita.

Mistake Number 7: Writing us letters on the front of the attendance roster. This drives the scanner nuts. It rejects the roster. See Mistake Number 4 above. Same results. I know that you know that people can't write notes on the front of a scanner form so I can't figure out who the people are who are doing it. They are out there. Someone make them stop!

Mistake Number 8: Bending. Folding. Stapling. Mutilating. I know it sounds like a review of a Stephen King novel but this is actually what happens to our beloved scannable attendance forms. We lovingly send them out in pristine condition and they are returned mangled and misused. These abused scanner forms will not scan. We have to manually enter the data. We have received forms with the corners clipped off (no idea why), with staples in them, with chocolate on them, covered with scotch tape, with teeth marks (I feel your frustration), and covered with blood (I feel your pain).

Mistake Number 9: Getting insulted when we remind you to turn in your forms on time. Hey, we are all in this together. It's not us versus you. We aren't trying to harass or belittle you. It's self-preservation. We just want the darn forms so the auditor will not harass and belittle us. Even though we are only collecting the forms, we are forced to wear the error rate dunce cap. Help us help you! Show us the attendance forms.

The next installment will deal with the most common misconception in attendance processing: All students who are marked as absent will be dropped. I hope I won't spoil your anticipation of the article if I tell you ahead of time that this is not true. Stay tuned.

(Earlier articles in this series are available in the Daily Tribune archive. See the link at the bottom of the right hand column.)

Deborah Benjamin
Registration and Records
02/12/2004