Attention slackers

BRIANNA HARRINGTON
BUSINESS EDITOR
@BNH1995

Listen up, I have some bad news for all the slackers out there. A new application has been released called Class 120 that will help professors, parents, and campus administration track the attendance of students.

The developer said the purpose is to help students keep themselves accountable and teach them to be punctual.

However, I do not think that this serves that purpose. Students, especially college ones, are going to learn accountability and punctuality on their own. I think that this application is useless and teaches students that someone will be there to hold their hand and keep them accountable, which is not the case in the real world.

Applications like this will only lead to students falling on their faces when they get into a work atmosphere and realize they have to actually be accountable for themselves.

The app costs $200 per year and tracks the student’s attendance and alerts the parent, professor, or campus administration of the student’s absence if they have not attended class for two consecutive days.

It also alerts the student that they have missed a lesson, which is useless in my opinion because the student probably missed class intentionally and is already aware of their absence.

Even more shocking is that the developing company, Core Principle, will call to confront the student, which is a feature available if the parent or professor does not feel comfortable doing it.

If a parent or professor cannot confront the student about absences, then there is no reason to track them in the first place. It seems ridiculous that a complete stranger would call and confront someone about missing classes.

The app has been made available to about 2,000 college campuses so far, and they developers hope to extend that to 5,000 by next year with new marketing strategies. It is popular in other countries with parents who have students studying abroad in America.

The only good thing about this app is that the student must download it on their phone for it to work, so it is up to the student if they want to participate in attendance tracking.

Sophomore Noelle Souza does not believe that this app will become very popular.

“Unless they are forced by their parents, no one will download the app.” Souza said. “Most people go to college to get educated, not to ditch class. If they are serious about their education, they won’t have to need an app to help keep them accountable. They will do it on their own.”

Even though this app seems like a good idea at first, I think it will lead to student dependence on authority figures to keep track of them instead of students learning to be indpependent.