Attendance Policy and Absences

Attendance will be taken at every class (except during the add-and-drop period.)

Each student’s official attendance record can be accessed on Moodle at any time. Please, check it regularly.

Students who are late to class will be considered absent unless they ask for a change in the attendance record by the end of the class in question. Later amendments cannot be taken into consideration.

Up to five (5) permitted unexcused absences are allowed in this course without consequences. More than 5 permitted unexcused absences regardless of the reason (that is, missing more than 20% of the course) will have you fail the course.

For privacy reasons, this instructor is unable to justify any absence: 5 permitted unexcused absences are enough to cover any ordinary mishap.

If (and only if) a student has exceeded the number of permitted unexcused absences for a specific course, due to serious, documented conditions (such as hospitalization), the student may petition the Academic Dean’s Office for an exceptional excuse for additional absences. To request an exceptional excused absence from the Academic Dean’s Office, submit the Excused Absences Request Form (available on the Registrar’s page, under forms and petitions), along with the appropriate documentation supporting the request, within five academic days of the absence.

An absence from a given class may be excused by the Dean’s Office for reasons such as the following: 

• the student’s own illness or hospitalization;

• the student’s physical inability to reach the university campus;

• death in a student’s immediate family (when the student attends the funeral);

• impending death or life-threatening illness or injury in the student’s immediate family, when the student is absent in order to be present with the ill or injured person;

• the pursuit of high-level activities in such areas as champion-level competitions or professional artistic pursuits;

• the observance of a religious holiday; or

• the student’s performance of required military service.

The Academic Dean’s Office will not excuse absences resulting from, e.g., job interviews, family celebrations, travel difficulties, student misunderstandings of instructor or university policies, or other matters involving the personal convenience of a student.

When the Academic Dean’s Office grants an excuse request, it will notify the student’s  instructor. Whether or not your absences are excused, you are always expected to meet the learning objectives of the course as set by the instructor. If you are going to be missing several class meetings, for whatever reason, you should communicate with your instructors regarding the impact of these absences on your academic progress. An instructor may advise you to withdraw from a class if absences seem likely to prevent you from meeting the course objectives. In this case, you should contact the Academic Dean’s Office ([email protected]) for additional academic advising.

An instructor will provide a student whose absence from a class is excused with:

a. an appropriate opportunity to make up for the credit lost because the student failed to complete an in-class credit-bearing exercise (in-class work that counts toward a student’s grade) scheduled for a day when the student was absent with excuse;

b. an appropriate opportunity to submit credit-bearing homework (work done out of class that counts toward a student’s grade) the student was unable to submit in virtue of an excused absence. (It will ordinarily be assumed that a student can submit a homework exercise remotely. It is the responsibility of the student to make the case that completing and submitting an exercise was not realistically possible under the circumstances.)

Exams – Absences and Makeups

Instructors may, at their discretion, allow students to make-up missed quizzes or other, less important, graded work to students absent without an official excuse. 

Major examinations (midterms, finals) may only be re-administered or otherwise excused or accommodated, with the permission of the Dean’s Office. The standard for justifying an absence from a major examination is evidence of a serious difficulty preventing attendance. A serious difficulty includes a student’s own illness, hospitalization or death in the immediate family (when the student attends the funeral) or other situations of similar gravity. Missed exams owing to other meaningful conflicts, such as job interviews, family celebrations, travel plans or difficulties, student misunderstandings, alarm clock failure, or personal convenience, will not normally be excused.

Students seeking an excuse for an absence from a major exam must notify their Instructor or the Dean’s Office prior to the exam, and submit the Excused Absences Request Form, also available on the Registrar’s Office webpage.

Once a request is accepted, it will be the instructor’s prerogative to have the student take a make-up exam, submit a make-up assignment, or have the weight of the missed exam shifted to another assessment. 

Please, refer to the university catalog for any other doubts regarding attendance policy: https://www.johncabot.edu/academics/academic-policies.aspx

Supplementary Reading Material

• Gaughan, Judy E. Murder Was Not a Crime : Homicide and Power in the Roman Republic. 1st ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010.

https://jculibrary.on.worldcat.org/oclc/560669765

• Lintott, A. W. Violence in Republican Rome. 2nd ed. with new introduction and corrections. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999

John Cabot University Frohring Library Stacks – Main collection DG211 .L5 1999

• Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat. Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline. Translated by David Lowenthal. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub, 1999

John Cabot University Frohring Library Stacks – Main collection DG210 .M778 1999

• Dyson, Stephen L. Rome : A Living Portrait of an Ancient City. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.

John Cabot University Frohring Library Stacks – Main collection DG62.5 .D97 2010

• Dyson, Stephen L. “The Gallic Frontier In Northern Italy.” In The Creation Of The Roman Frontier, 7–41. Princeton University Press, 1985.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7zvxp2.6 

• Woolf, Greg. Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

John Cabot University Frohring Library Stacks – Main collection DC33.2 .W66 1998

• Syme, Ronald. The Roman Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. https://jculibrary.on.worldcat.org/oclc/64668393

  • The change from Republic to Empire was inevitable if the Roman state wanted to survive: the institutions of the Republic were inadequate and the Senate too corrupted to the manage the new territorial, social, and political situations of the Late Republic. The republican institutions were unable to keep with the changes, and this caused the civil wars, and their own obsolescence. 

• Gruen, Erich S. The Last Generation of the Roman Republic. Reprint 2020. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1974

https://jculibrary.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1224279378 

•  “Civil war caused the fall of the Republic-not vice versa. The Republican machinery was not in a state of disrepair and collapse awaiting but a final push to kick away the remaining traces.” “In a sense, the most arresting feature of the late Republic is not lawlessness but an obsession with legalisms. “ The Republican institutions went in overdrive and burned up because they had to face the Civil wars

• Flower, Harriet I. Roman Republics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. JCU ebook @https://jculibrary.on.worldcat.org/oclc/301798480 

  • Radically challenging the traditional picture of a single monolithic republic, she argues that there were multiple republics, each with its own clearly distinguishable strengths and weaknesses. “Sulla’s new republic was fundamentally different, and was not wholly accepted by the senate or the magistrates. The failure of the senate to perform the role envisioned by Sulla, Flower suggests, led to the emergence of powerful generals in the style of Marius and Sulla himself “ from Bryn Mawr Review https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2010/2010.02.69/ 

• Belonick, Paul. Restraint, Conflict, and the Fall of the Roman Republic. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2023 NOT AT JCU

  • “This book makes the case that scholars should pay more attention to ancient claims that the political dissolution of the Roman Republic resulted from a breakdown of morality.” From Bryn Mawr Review https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2023/2023.10.15/