I think this is a pretty big miss on where the issues with these sorts of systems are - I'm sure some teachers are phoning it in but the student in the article (Molina) was immediately awarded an F and then had to go through a two month appeal process to get that undone. Once he was talking to a person things moved pretty quickly but the backlog of cases results in a lot of unnecessary stress on students.
If you’re a straight-A student, it’s probably not an issue. Like cutting up, or seen as an “average” student, your excuses are just that, and they aren’t excused.