I see both sides of this. I acknowledge that locking the door in someone’s face is downright rude and does not serve the purpose that the on time rule seeks to impose.
On the other hand, I have a maxim burned into my brain by the boss of my first ever job. The maxim is now ingraned in my DNA and held as a metaphysical truth, so that I think anyone who disagrees with it must be either clinically insane or a simple neanderthal: To be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, to be late is unexcusable.
I haven’t read most of the thread yet, but I have to object to Kimstu’s assertion that if the professor warned Ooner, then he has no right to complain. No. Announcing you’re an asshole does not make you not an asshole. (I take no position as to whether the professor is an asshole. Well, actually I do take a position, but it’s not germane to my point here.) The rubric for determining when behavior is socially acceptable is not whether it is preannounced.
Not every company or boss is draconian about how you should never be late or your ass is out on the lawn. I have a coworker who shows up for work any time between 8 and 9:30. The days I go into the office, I’m almost always 15 minutes late. So why doesn’t this bother our manager? Because as long as we put in our time (25 hours for me; 40 for my coworker) and get our work done, he doesn’t care when it happens.
I don’t like zero tolerance policies like this professor’s; they eliminate common sense. And I don’t know about your university, but at mine, it wasn’t uncommon for a professor to continue talking for a minute or two after the lecture was over. If your next class was on the other side of the campus, just getting to class on time could occasionally be difficult.
I can see more and more what a total waste of time this board is. What does defending tardiness and co-enabling the immature attitude that anyone with rules you don’t like is an asshole? It’s an ignorance-in.
I don’t believe for one second you were on time. Whining, put-upon late people always lie about what time they were there. Good for the prof for locking you out. Be on time next time. And for fucks sake, take some responsibility for yourself.
A good teacher should be devastated to hear that his actions have made a student less enthusiastic about the class. If a teacher doesn’t care about whether the students are enthusiastic, they’re in the wrong line of work.
I’m in a teaching program now, and there are fellow students whom I desperately want to drum out of the department precisely because they’re not going to care when they’re teachers.
I’m with you and Ravenman. I feel it is my job to account for some of the variances in transport time. Thus, if I get a 15 minute delay on the subway, I can still be at work on time. It is the way I was brought up. As a boss, the person who times themselves thusly gets more slack when they hit a 30 minute delay than the person who times their commute on the nose who hits a 10 minute delay. I value contingency planning.
I did mess up that post pretty badly. I was kind of half kidding anyway, but my basic feelings is that this bitch-in isn’t fighting ignorance. Your strawman of “factory floor regimentation” I simply dismiss out of hand. What is missing in this thread is any reflection on students respecting one another. It’s annoying and distracting to have students always coming in late. I’ve been tempted to lock the door myself, so students understand that 1:15 (or whatever) really DOES mean 1:15 and not 1:40. I would do that so I could actually start on time, instead of making the punctual students wait for the latecomers and/or listen to the first 10 minutes repeated.
I can understand a professor getting frustrated and setting a zero tolerance policy. I’m also suspicious of the OP, since in my experience as a teacher students who complain also fudge the truth when reporting events to third parties.
Unless I’ve got evidence to the contrary, I’ll give people benefit of the doubt on their posts. I mean, if the dude’s lying, it may actually have been work, not school; and he may have shown up wearing a wetsuit with a strapon, not just shown up as 4 pm hit; and his boss may have thrown him a tickertape parade, not locked the door on him. Once we stop believing the OP, it becomes difficult to have anything as an object of discussion.
I’d say this is an insulting policy to begin with, and shouldn’t be followed: it addresses a real problem in a very unhelpful fashion. If the professor insists on the policy, however, he owes students the benefit of the doubt; and in this case he clearly didn’t offer it.
In the military there’s an expression, “if you’re not fifteen minutes early, you’re late.” It’s a good attitude for students to have. The time the class starts isn’t a deadline for being at the door. It’s when the class starts.
That’s cool, but our dear professor doesn’t seem to be offering even 10 seconds worth of slack on a (presumed) first offence. This lack of slack (heh) is being directed not to an employee who is being paid to show on time, but to a student who has himself paid a big stack of money for the priviledge of sitting in that room for an hour and a half.
There is a point where reasonable rules to prevent class disruption turn into draconian rules implemented by a power hungry prof. I think this guy went way over that line.