In December 1918 the faculty adopted the policy that “the number of allowable absences from class shall equal the number of class meetings of the class per week.” When a student’s absences exceeded this number, the student was required to take, at once, a special examination covering such work as the professor directed and pay to the university a fee of $2 for each examination. In computing the absences, an absence excused counted as one-half absence, and an unexcused absence counted as one. An unexcused absence from the meeting of a class immediately preceding or following a regularly announced holiday counted as two absences. Each faculty member was, additionally, required to turn into the dean’s office the absences for the preceding week by Tuesday at noon. A faculty member who failed to do so was required to pay $1 to the treasurer of the university for each such failure.
In 1928 when Dean of Men F. M. Massey reported two thousand class cuts in one week (by eight hundred students), the faculty adopted a new absence rule that retained the limit of absences authorized each quarter to the number of times the class met per week, but it required that students who exceeded the allowable cuts were to receive an automatic F in the course and be placed on probation. A student dropped from two courses was to be dropped from the university.
In the 1930s the faculty established a rule that two tardy appearances at a class counted as one cut, and in 1938 the policy was modified to counting a tardy the same as a cut. (Students who arrived after the roll call were tardy.)