I don't see the point of most of these policies other than to make people very, very anxious. Being late to section once or twice would seem to have no reasonable relationship to a student's understanding of the material, yet here it results in an instant F. I wonder if the instructor suffers from a personality disorder.
He actually has a pretty darn good rating on ratemyprof (yes I hate that site too). Anyways I suspect its his method of weeding out the students that are less passionate about the topic. As it says in the syllabus the class is overly full, and there aren't enough TAs to support it. I'm not defending his methodology, but I understand his motivation (preference to motivated students first).
