It’s a situation professors faces every semester or two. A student’s grandparent passes away and they have to leave for the funeral. When this happens around exam time, it creates a difficult situation for students. And it also creates an awkward situation for faculty: prove to us that Nana passed away. It makes me feel like a jerk to ask this of my students, but I have a responsibility to do it.

Some students volunteer the information. Last semester a student brought me the funeral program so that I could verify that he indeed went to a funeral and had a legitimate excuse. He offered to do this when he told me about the situation initially, so I didn’t have to ask him the awkward question, and that made me feel better about the whole thing. But I need some kind of proof because the facts are: 1) grandparents die, and 2) some students lie.

When I was teaching at St. Louis University while in graduate school, I had a principles class one summer. I had a student in that class who had taken the same class with me the previous semester and failed it. I don’t know why she was taking it with me again instead of with another professor, but that was her call. Anyway, she did poorly on the midterm exam and was not doing well on her homework assignments. She had a C-/D+ going into the final exam, which was going to make or break her grade. And wouldn’t you know it, the night before the final exam, her grandma got sick.

I receive an e-mail from her at around 10pm the night before the final exam saying that her grandmother was admitted to a hospital in Cape Girardeau (over 100 miles from St. Louis). She has to leave first thing in the morning to be by her bedside, so she won’t be able to take the final exam. She doesn’t know how long she’ll have to be down in Cape, so she wants to know how I will handle the situation. I tell her that I’ll give her one week to take the final exam. If she can’t do that, then I’ll just have to give her a grade of “incomplete,” allowing her to take the final exam the next semester in someone else’s class. Sure enough, as I expected, the week goes by and she doesn’t take the exam.

When I get the e-mail, I know it’s a lie. I just feel it in my gut. So after her week passes, I go to the registrar’s office in the business school and talk to the person behind the counter there. I explain that I have a strong suspicion this is a lie and I want to ask for proof of the situation before I just give her an incomplete, but I’m not sure if I’m even allowed to or how I am supposed to go about it. They tell me that I should tell this student that in order for them to process the incomplete, the registrar’s office needs proof of the situation. Bingo! I get to blame it on the administration. Perfect.

I e-mail her and say that the registrar’s office needs some kind of proof — a hospital record, an admissions receipt, something, anything, to confirm this, or I will have to give her an F instead of the incomplete she wants. I give her 30 days. I remind her 3 weeks later. I get nothing. I gave her the F. She never disputed it.

Bottom line: I called her bluff and she folded. There was no sick grandmother. I didn’t even know her grandmother’s name — she could have given me something from any woman admitted to any hospital in Cape Girardeau and I would have taken it. My gut was right.

That’s why your professors ask you for proof that your relative died. It’s awkward and we don’t want to do it, but we have to do it because some of your classmates lie and cheat and we don’t want to be taken advantage of. In addition, it’s not fair to the rest of you who study your butts off before an exam you wish you had more time to study for. You suck it up, study hard and try your best, and we thank you for that. We have a duty to make sure that others don’t get bailed out by lying.

So if you are unfortunate enough to have a loved one pass away at an inconvenient time, before an exam or paper is due, make it easy on both you and your professors. Tell them you will bring proof, and then follow up and bring that proof. (If you forget amidst all the turmoil, please don’t be offended if we ask you for it.) It will let us know that you understand that the situation is difficult for both of us, and that you’re not lying about anything. And it will restore a little of our faith in our students.