clarification
My intend is to treat the students as equally and objective as much as possible. For example, if a student requests to take a day off for religious reasons, I feel I should give all the students the option to take a day off without any penalty.There are students who are agnostic or atheists. I feel these students should have the same rights as the devout Christians, Muslims or Jews or ... For this reason I urge the students to read carefully my syllabus and discuss things they do not agree with. So, if there are any changes, these changes will apply to everyone. Of course, there are always unforeseen situations that may arise but I expect these situations to happen on person-to-person basis not on group basis. However, "treat the same" does it not mean "treat equally?" In any case, before characterizing my statement as "discriminatory", should they have not asked me what my real indent was?
I reside in the state of Michigan, the students missed one of the assignments and they have not even realized it. I e-mailed to find out how they were doing and after about a week they came back to be students. At this point I realized that they were on vacation or in a period or relaxation and they did not have the diligence to consult their calendar or check their email account. So, I did what my syllabus states. I took points off and I did not grant their request for exceptional consideration based on the fact that their were too busy with their families.