RORY MACLEAN
News Editor

Students with spotty attendance records may have a saving grace this flu season — the university has asked instructors to be more flexible regarding absences and to refrain from requesting medical notes.

“We haven’t given specific directions but we have asked (instructors) to be more flexible around assignments and deadlines and things like that,” said David Hannah, vice-president student and enrolment services. Hannah is the head of the university’s flu response team.

“One of the clear messages from public health authorities is if people are sick, they should stay home.”

On the university’s flu preparedness website, there is a downloadable form for students to fill out and give to their instructors in lieu of a doctor’s note.

The goal of the university’s measure is to remove the barriers to having students stay home if they are feeling sick. But by making it easier to miss class, the university is running the risk of increasing illegitimate absenteeism.

Adam Duh, an arts and science student, is intrigued by the recent development.

He says attendance in his classes is not strict, but if it were, he might take advantage of the new system.

“If they took attendance, I would probably skip class more,” he said. “I skip anyway. Like, I should be in class now.”

Duh was skipping his history class to work on his math assignments, which he had deemed more important.

Hannah says his team is well aware of this risk but he thinks students are responsible enough to make the right decision.

“I must say, I don’t see who they’re harming except themselves. They pay a lot of money to come here and get an education”¦ so it’s a bit counterintuitive.”

Hannah and his crisis management team will be monitoring absenteeism rates throughout the university at the request of the Saskatoon Health Region. The health region has also asked schools and some businesses to monitor absenteeism as an indicator of the spread of the virus.

Primary and secondary schools typically take attendance so the task was easy for them, says Hannah. Not so in university.

“We were scratching our heads saying, ”˜How on Earth are we going to figure that out?’ ”

They managed to find a number of classes around campus where attendance is either mandatory or very high. These 20 to 25 classes — so called “sentinel classes” — represent about 2,000 students, so Hannah’s team is using them as a monitor.

Still, all this careful preperation has some students scratching their heads.

“As far as I know, H1N1 is not really a threat anymore,” said Alexandria Werenka, a Browsers employee. “I get those emails and I’m just like ”˜Ugh! Another one?’ Usually I just don’t pay attention to them.”

Hannah says that, from the university’s perspective, the severity of the virus is not the problem.

“The major concern that we’re having is that we’ll have significantly higher levels of absentee rates in terms of labs and clinical settings. When large numbers of students, or professors, for that matter, start missing large numbers of classes, it can have a significant effect.”

The university expects absenteeism to increase by about 10 to 15 per cent.