You cannot be a college professor treating grown-ass adults as if they are still in elementary school.
The professor’s being an ass. This is a power trip and Ooner is entitled to feeling justifiably pissed. I immediately dropped the course of the one (and only) professor who pulled this shit on me the first day of class.
This has jack-all to do with a sense of entitlement as it does being dicked around by some clown who lectures for a living.
This coming from a person with college professors in the family, none of whom had a policy of barring students from pursuing higher education.
Seeing as he’s obviously not clear about the nature of the 4:00 rule, I’d say you’re cutting the prof quite a bit of slack. Besides, we go to college for higher education, not to learn to mind Teacher. Or would you say that one true measure of maturity is knowing when to shut up and take crap?
The prof has a right not to have his class disrupted, but he doesn’t have the right to be flaming cockass about it, which is what he was being when he shut the door in Ooner’s face at or before the start of class. Verdict for the plaintiff.
While you may have a point, there is no way she got fired from an office job for consistently showing up 2 minutes late. Either you work for the most draconian squad of pencil-pushers the world has ever known, or you exaggerate. I hope for your sake it’s the latter.
Firstly I graduated from the USMA, have a masters from UVA, and have taught classes at three different major universities and several smaller colleges. In my experiences at these various academic institutions I’ve never came across a school that would even consider locking the door on students. This is just absolutely unacceptable from a safety standpoint and I don’t know of any sane school administrator that wouldn’t adamantly ban any such practice.
Anyways, at the Academy you weren’t late for class, if you were you got demerits. However a military academy is a vastly different situation from a public or private school.
College is pretty much the only situation I can think of where the customer pays to get bossed around by his “employees.”
I do think professors need to have certain powers within the classroom so that anarchy does not ensue. But I think there should be limits and professors should never think the professor-student relationship is akin to a boss-employee relationship. Because the student is the one paying the professor’s salary, not vice versa.
Eh, in my office, we’re expected to be there 9-5, with a paid 1-hour lunch break. No excuse for strolling in late every single day, munching a donut, while her boss was frantically searching for her. She had no sense of urgency or time, and didn’t care about the job enough to show up on time.
When you get paid for 40 hours a week and only work 35 at the most, you show up on time, if you want to keep that gig. [/hijack]
I’ve actually had more than one class where this was done. In one class, we voted on things like whether eating and drinking would be allowed (it was, as long as it was kept quiet), whether we’d have the paper due before the Thanksgiving break or after (before, so we didn’t have to worry about it), and whether we would have a break in the middle of a 3-hour class, or not have the break and leave 15 minutes earlier (no break). In another class, we voted on whether we would have a final or not. Not surprisingly, we voted no, but decided that anyone who wanted to take the final and have it count towards their grade could do so. In both cases, it worked out quite well, and there were no complaints.
I once had a professor who would wind up and toss pieces of chalk lightly through the air, and hitting sleeping students on the noggin. Great professor, and great aim too! I never saw him miss.
I think in these instances people are talking about locking the door so it’s unopenable from the outside, but not the inside. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a door in a college building that couldn’t be opened from the inside.
I’d say coming in late counts as disruptive. 5-10 minutes late, maybe okay. More than that is not - unless it’s a huge classroom that has a back door.
A lot of my classes counted three tardies (tardy being more than 10 mintues late) as one absent, and graded accordingly. It’s extremely annoying when students come huffing and puffing into class when we are already well into the lecture. I don’t mind what people do in class - they can knit, read, or jerk off in their seats, for all I care - as long as it’s not distracting to other people. (Although it would be preferable if they paid attention to class, but that’s just me.) Bursting into class while the professor is talking definitely counts as distracting.
PS - I understand that’s not what happened in the OP, and I agree the prof was being a jerk in that situation. Just wanted to add my 2 pence.
I completely agree. Unfortunately, some students seem committed to proving that they cannot, in fact, behave like “grown-ass adults” in a college environment.
As far as the OP goes, i agree. I hate students coming late to class, but i’d never do what Ooner’s prof did. He was just a jackass.
On the syllabus i handed out to my class at the beginning of this semester, i made a point of including an exhortation to arrive on time. I also announced in the first class that coming late is unacceptable, as it is distracting for me and for other students. These warnings are especially necessary because i’m teaching a 9am class, and students often have trouble dragging their asses out of bed and arriving on time.
I find that one thing that helps is to let them know that arriving at 9am is no easier for me than it is for them. My usual bedtime is 2 or 3am, and that 9am class seriously disrupts my regular sleeping pattern. If i can do it, so can they.
This morning, a student came in about five minutes late. At the end of class she apologised profusely, saying that the train had been running late. I told her not to worry about it. When i give my warnings about arriving late, i’m mainly trying to head off the habitual latecomers, because in my experience it’s the same one or two people who drag themselves into class late all the time. And often, those same people are the sort of inconsiderate fucks who make no effort to enter the classroom quietly and unobtrusively.
I see both sides here. It’s unavoidable that sometimes we’re late.
BUT. There seems to be a lot of complaning about how teachers treat college students like elementary school students. Here’s a hint (not directed to anyone in this thread): don’t act like one. Don’t whisper in class to your friend. Don’t pass notes. Show up on time, especially for discussion sections, where it’s not so easy to slink in the back. If you don’t want to be there, fine with me. But if you do show up, act like a freakin’ adult.
Whatever happened to the value of mild public humiliation as a deterrent to lateness? In my classes, there were a few habitual latecomers. I’d simply say something like “Hello Mr. Jones! How are you today?” Worked great, as they really didn’t want to be singled out like that.
Of course I didn’t do that the first time someone was late. Occasional lateness was to be expected, as it was a NYC school, and most of the students were subject to the vagaries of the subway system. And in a couple of cases, the students had some kind of conflict that meant they would be late fairly often. I simply asked that they take out their notebook and pen before they entered the classroom so they wouldn’t have to rummage around in the middle of class.
I agree that Ooner’s prof was a jackass on a power trip.
The thing is Ooner, this is the kind of situation where “majority rule” doesn’t count. If it bothers ONE kid in class – even if he’s a snivelly, snot-nosed whiny brat – then THAT’S the policy.
So, I’ll put $10 on “coming in late = distraction, don’t do it. Not by a second”.
Man, if we had a guy at the movie theater be able to do that. . . shut the door right in someone’s face. Would I ever love that.
Anyway. . .this is the beginning of the semester, right?
I guarantee if you show up 5 minutes early for the next 4 weeks of class, and he sees you coming down the hall at 3:59:50 the next day, he holds the door open for you and welcomes you in. It’s not power tripping. It’s a guy establishing early on the kind of behavior he expects from the class.
Thing about the working world is, if you’re 10 seconds late, they don’t lock the front door of the office in your face, and tell you to go home. I’d love to hear even a single anecdote of this sort of behavior in the workplace. If you are habitually late, they discuss it with you, and you either shape up or ship out. Note again that this is the workforce, where your employer gives YOU money to show up on time, and they’re not as draconian as this professor.
I can appreciate rules, but there is also a bit of humanity one should expect between people, when he locks the door (a somewhat reasonable rule to prevent interruption), he should let students just outside the door come in. Total power trip. I’d love to see him show up late one day so he could get locked out of his own class.
Just wanted to add my 2 pence.