Subject: New Attendance Policy From: "William J. Rapaport" Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2010 13:30:03 -0400 (EDT) I will be the first to admit that CSE 501 is not perfect. One problem is that any course with multiple lecturers is going to suffer from a version of "multiple personality disorder" :-) This is especially the case when the various lecturers aren't working together to plan a coherent sequence of presentations. But to some extent this is unavoidable, because there is no single person in the department who knows everything that we think is important for you to be introduced to: the local UB computer systems, issues in Internet security, various pieces of productivity software, topics like how to study and how to give presentations, etc. Another problem is that the course is mixed in with departmental colloquia. This is supposed to be an advantage, because it gives you an opportunity to see and hear new work being done by important computer scientists. But, of course, it can be a disadvantage if the talk is not completely understandable or if you don't have the right background for it. Given these problems and the evident lack of interest that some (but not all) of you have in some (but hopefully not all) of the topics, what should we do? I could continue to be frustrated at the lack of academic integrity shown by those of you who forge your friends' signatures on the attendance sheet. I could continue to be frustrated by the disrespect that some of you show by walking out in the middle of a lecture. I could continue to be annoyed by the lack of concern that some of you have for your fellow students by your constant talking during the lectures. Or I could just say that, from now on, I will only be concerned with those of you who are interested in what we have to present to you. So: I will no longer take attendance. Attend or not, as you wish. But: If you attend, please be polite and don't leave in the middle. And please don't talk to your neighbors; if you do, I will ask you to leave.