Post-Election Attendance

Last week, Aiden Pierre-Louis ’26 wrote an article about students planning to skip class the day after the election. “The most common sentiment of those skipping classes is a need for time to process the results, which they prioritize over attending class,” wrote Pierre-Louis, of would be skippers.

We wanted to see just how many followed through. We collected attendance numbers from 48 classes, each taught on November 6, using professor surveys and student observations. The classes fell under a wide array of academic disciplines: anthropology, biology, computer science, economics, English, environmental studies, history, language, math, music, performance and communication arts, philosophy, political science, psychology, science, sociology, sports studies and studio art.

Overall, there are 821 students enrolled in the classes we looked at. 81.6 percent of them attended classes after the election – meaning it did not noticeably impact attendance.

The top three disciplines attendance-wise were biology, sports studies, and philosophy, each notching more than 90 percent. Sports studies notched a perfect 100 percent attendance rate. History, economics, and environmental studies rounded out the bottom three in attendance.