I recently looked into our policies on late papers and extensions, and found them to be quite harsh and restrictive.
Papers lose 0.6 of a letter mark for the first day late, and 0.2 for each subsequent day (each day of the weekend counts, but you can email your paper in to the records office). Extensions are only granted in cases of “serious illness or compelling personal circumstances”. Further, “Written documentation (i.e. a doctor’s note) is required in all circumstances”.
I can’t say I was exactly surprised, as I feel these policies are reflective of broader trends about how our law schools approaches health and wellness, as well as diversity. Still, I do find them galling, especially given how relatively easy it is to change them compared with other issues (e.g. tuition).
In order to criticize them, I think it’s important to first lay out why I think schools have accommodation policies in the first place. I think it’s fairly uncontroversial to say that the goal of such policies is to ensure everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. In order to create this level playing field, these policies work on the well-established principle that equality doesn’t always mean treating everyone the same. Obviously our policies follow this principle to some extent, but I believe they fail at truly embracing it.
There are many situations our policies likely do not cover. Do you think a parent’s child getting sick with a cold would constitute a “compelling personal circumstance”? What about a child who comes home crying because she was bullied and needs time and attention that her parent had earmarked for finishing a paper? What happens to the students struggling with mental illness who feel that they aren’t able to get a doctor’s note? What about students whose friends, family, or loved ones are facing mental illness? Not accommodating such situations ignores the fact that students’ health and well-being is significantly affected by their relationships with other people.
Even if these situations are covered, the requirements for written documentation are incredibly intrusive. Do we really want to require a student to bring in medical evidence that his partner suffers from depression and happened to need his attention more than his law school paper did? Demanding such documentation shows a blatant lack of concern for students’ privacy. Further, it ignores the fact that groups that face the greatest barriers to law school are also the same groups that are much less likely to have access and/or desire to attend medical or mental health institutions. By requiring that students’ concerns are validated by institutions that in many cases continue to play a significant role in discriminating against them, U of T helps to erase the realities of these students’ lives and require that they ignore the very differences that we theoretically celebrate.
Given these concerns, one wonders why we would want to limit the circumstances in which students are granted extensions. The most obvious explanation is the concern that students who are granted an extension receive an advantage over students who are not. As we are graded on a strict curve, this advantage would then clearly come at an unfair cost to other students. I find this argument unpersuasive. Law students, especially first year students, are extraordinarily busy. Extra time to work on a small group paper comes at the expenses of time that could spent doing readings or preparing for exams. The principal advantage that an extension gives is not in allowing students to write a better paper than they otherwise would, it is in giving them a small breathing space to manage their affairs when unexpected disruptions enter their life. 72 hours can be the difference between full blown panic and manageable stress, between an all-nighter and a healthy amount of sleep, between a paper the student ends up hating and one that she is proud to hand in.
Nor can it be argued our policies are about encouraging responsibility. A report from the curriculum committee acknowledges that first year students spend an average of 50 hours a week on law school, not including extracurriculars, assignments, or exam preparation. Given such a crowded schedule, a restrictive extension policy doesn’t encourage careful time management. It encourages dedication to law school above all other concerns. This comes across pretty clearly in the policies for what happens if an extension is granted: “It is expected that students will, during the period of the extension, be fully engaged in the completion of the paper and set aside all other commitments with the exception of preparing for and attending classes”. What about those compelling circumstances that got you an extension in the first place? U of T seems to say that as much possible you should ignore them.
I distinctly remember a mandatory ethics seminar telling students to own up to their supervisors at work when they think they won’t be able to meet a deadline and still complete a task with the care it deserves. Yet we have a triple punishment for the first day late, clearly pressuring students to pull an all-nighter rather than suffer a serious hit to their grades. Obviously we will face deadlines at work that simply cannot be changed, but I would argue we represent such situations already with exams, a situation where I do think serious concerns over fairness and practicality justify strict restrictions on accommodation requests.
U of T talks a good game of being concerned about student health and wellness, but when push comes to shove it’s clear we take our cues from what we perceive to be the industry standard. We have substantially altered our admission criteria in the hopes of increasing the diversity of students that we attract, but once we get them here we practice a “one size fits all” approach towards accommodating them. I have no problems with our smoothies and puppies, but I’d rather U of T start with ensuring its students privacy and autonomy, and go from there. For now, it’s pretty clear U of T cares more about superficial solutions than meaningful impact.
