Student Bereavement Policy introduced into SGA House and Senate
Tony Voisin (left) speaks to the SGA Senate on Mon. Oct. 19 in the Lake Superior Room of the Bovee University Center | Jordyn Hermani
Student Government Association Senate voted in favor of drafting a Student Bereavement Policy.
The policy would allow students to contact the university in the event of a death in the family and arrange for an alternative method to completing course work in their absence. The vote was tabled in the House in order for members to take policy information back to their RSOs.
Under the guidelines of the policy, students would work with professors and Student Affairs to determine the length of the absence and how school work would be dealt with.
Response from the House and Senate was both largely positive.
Associate Vice President of Student Affairs Tony Voisin defined the policy as a type of “extended leave” for students.
“In this case when you have someone who as passed away and you need to be home with your family, you may have to go out of state if you are from out of state yourself or have relatives that live out of state,” Voisin said. "That would involve a two, three, four day absence from CMU and we don't want you to be penalized from having to miss work, classwork, tests, speeches, papers or exams. That's what the Student Bereavement Policy takes into account.”
The finished policy is “close to being finished,” he said.
“These things are going to unfortunately happen to all of us at some time (in our lives),” Voisin said. “When it happens to students, we don't want a semester's worth of work to go down the drain because you had to be gone the week of finals.”
Extension of due dates, make up exams, alternative projects and assignments, assigning incomplete grades, issuing a final grade at the time of the of a student's leave of absence and figuring out alternative measures to deal with a student's situation are all possible measures which can be taken under the Student Bereavement Policy.
A date for the final draft has not yet been announced.
