An article in a previous issue of the Teaching Professor proposed a strategy to curb illegitimate student excuses concerning a death in their families. When students have missed a class or want extensions on papers and offer the excuse that a family member has died, Karen Eifler immediately sends a condolence card to a student’s family. She argued that if students are telling the truth, then the family is touched by her gesture of kindness; if students are lying, they have to explain things to their family members. This seems like a clever solution to a thorny problem: liars are “outed” and serve as an example to other students considering this fabrication, whereas truth tellers are provided with extra compassion from their professor in the form of a card. I’m not so sure about this strategy, even when students are telling the truth.