01/09/2026
๐ข๐ฃ๐๐ก๐๐ข๐ก | Plus One, Minus One
The rain does not ask whether you have a quiz tomorrow. It does not care if your uniform is ready, if your attendance is complete, or if being present means an additional point in your grade. Sometimes, it simply keeps falling.
For some students, a rainy morning means grabbing an umbrella and heading to school as usual. For others, it means waking up to floodwater entering their homes, checking whether the road is still passable, or helping their families move their belongings to safer places. Both are students, both have classes, but they are not facing the same morning.
This is where attendance becomes more complicated than a name being checked on a sheet of paper.
A student whose home and route are unaffected by flooding can still make it to class, take the scheduled quiz, and earn an additional point for being present. Meanwhile, another student may be sitting at home, not because they chose to skip class, but because the road outside has become impassable or their family needs them to stay. By the time the rain stops, that student may have missed not only a class but also a quiz and the chance to earn the same points as everyone else.
There is nothing wrong with recognizing students who make the effort to attend. Their presence reflects commitment. But when another student's absence is caused by flooding, should it carry the same academic weight?
The rain does not fall equally on everyone.
Some roads flood faster than others. Some homes sit on higher ground, while others are among the first to be reached by rising water. Some students live minutes away from campus, while others have to cross streets that become dangerous after hours of rain. While one student may be comfortably seated inside a classroom, another may be lifting books, appliances, and other belongings away from the floodwater.
Yet when academic policies treat everyone exactly the same, those differences disappear.
A missed quiz becomes a missed quiz. An absence becomes an absence. The circumstances behind them can easily become secondary to what appears on the record. A student who could not attend because of flooding may face the same consequence as someone who simply decided not to come.
This is not an argument against attendance. It is an argument for context.
Education should teach students that responsibility matters, but responsibility also means understanding that not every absence is a choice. There is a difference between choosing to stay home and being unable to leave because floodwater has blocked the road. There is also a difference between ignoring a scheduled quiz and missing it because the priority that morning was keeping one's family safe.
No grade is worth risking one's safety on a flooded road. No attendance point should become an unintended reason for a student to travel when conditions are already unsafe.
When severe weather disrupts transportation, homes, and communities, academic arrangements may also need to adjust. Make-up quizzes, alternative activities, and reasonable attendance considerations can help affected students recover what they missed without turning a natural disaster into an academic penalty.
Such measures do not reward irresponsibility. They recognize circumstances.
Fairness does not always mean giving everyone exactly the same thing. Sometimes, fairness means recognizing that students face different realities and giving them the support they need to reach the same goal.
The student who walked through dry streets and the student who watched floodwater rise outside their window are both trying to finish the same semester. One should not feel guilty for being able to attend, and the other should not feel guilty for being unable to.
A classroom may be the same. A schedule may be the same. A quiz may be the same. But the journey toward that classroom is never the same for everyone.
So when the next storm comes and one student is marked present while another is marked absent, perhaps we should look beyond the little mark beside their names.
Because sometimes, being absent does not mean a student failed to show up.
Sometimes, it means the flood showed up first.
Editorial Cartooning by Van Denrod Sobremisana
Digitalized by Kaye Jay Bacay
Words by Juvylyn Oquendo
Disclaimer: This opinion piece reflects the personal views of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of the publication, its editorial board, or the institution.
