When did eating in classrooms become acceptable?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I didn’t want to hijack the other thread so I am posting this question here

Professor’s guide for how to piss off students

In this thread I was surprised (shocked really) to learn that some posters felt it was acceptable to eat in college classrooms, and we pissed at the teacher, and felt she was being somewhat oppressive when she told them not to do it.

I graduated in 1981 from the U of MD College Park and I can’t recall a single class, day or night, where people were allowed to eat. Sure, some people snuck food in and tried to munch in the back, but this was done as surreptitiously as possible and God help you if the teacher got pissed at you for doing it.

Is eating in college classrooms OK these days?

2

As I said in that thread, it is totally ok nowadays. Most profs are laid back and try to be understanding of the fact that their students don’t really have time to eat. Of course, this drives me nuts.

How I loathe the sounds of smacking and gulping and slurping and chomping and :: twitch ::.

Diosabellissima
Who is heading off to the first class of the year, praying that no one needs to eat.

3

I’m totally surprised! :eek:

4

It depends on the professor, of course. At my law school, almost everyone carried drinks into lecture halls, usually sports bottles of water, and nobody minded. A few professors, however, made big deals about “no eating/no drinking” policies, and refused to even allow people to bring in bottles or cans, whether they drank them in class or not. These were definitely less popular professors as a result.

5

I remember it being okay when I was in university… (1995-1999) depending on the size of the class and the time of day. My natsci astronomy class was huge, (at least 400 students IIRC, maybe more?) and lectures were held in one of the largest class halls on campus, from 11:30am to 12:30pm. Grabbing a pizza or some other food and munching away in the upper seats became tradition for a lot of us. Grabbing breakfast and eating it during a morning course, even smaller ones, was also quite prevalent.

The professor of one of my upper-level compsci courses indicated no eating for his morning lectures too, but for a different reason. “I can’t grab breakfast before class and get here on time any more than you guys can, and because I have to talk for most of the class, I can’t exactly eat as I lecture. So it’d drive me crazy to see all of you filling up.” :slight_smile:

6

I took evening classes in the late 80’s early 90’s. In all classes but a piano class we would quietly eat occasionally.
I had a 5:30 to 8:30 Western Civ class that was pretty much manditory supper in class and even the Prof would be snacking.

My Computer Programming classes were no eating. This was at a tech school.
We had breaks and the school had a cafeteria in the same building.

7

Not only would I consider that distracting to the teacher, but to other students as well.

Sounds like more “entitlement generation” stuff to me. “I want to eat at 7:30, but I also want to have class at 7:30. So I don’t understand why the teacher won’t accomodate me.”

If “dinner time” is during class, then change your friggin dinner time. Eat before the 5:30 class. Have a snack while walking to class, and eat after class.

Starting from the title of the OP in the linked thread, that whole thread pisses me off. People just want to complain and blame teachers and blame policies when it can all be taken care of with this dose of reality: put your nose to the fucking grindstone and do some fucking work, because the guy next to you is doing it.

While you’re complaining to the chair that the teacher veered from the syllabus, there’s a kid studying the stuff you just veered into. Deal with it.

Play ball the way THEY way you to play and if you can’t hack it, fuck you. Drop out. You’re not running the show, Mr. I’m-Entitled. You knew 'em in high school. You knew 'em in college. You know 'em at work. It’s always someone else’s fault.

8

I went to college 30 years ago and we would sometimes have someone eat or (more commonly) bring something to drink in class – almost always the first class of the day (8:00 a.m.), 1:00 p.m. or one of those crunching three hour labs you get in the evenings. Generally the instructor wouldn’t make a big deal out of it if the person was being discreet.

9

When I was in school, we were allowed to have drinks and small things to eat like candy bars and such-- not sandwiches or crunchy chips, but the teacher would never mind if you munched on a cookie while she lectured.

My husband teaches in a university today, and he follows the same general guideline. As long as you’re not disturbing those around you, having a snack or drink doesn’t bother him.

10

I agree, and I’m in the “entitlement generation.” And I’d certainly have some words to say about that phrase, if we were in the pit.

11

For most people who take a 5:30 evening class, they just have time to go from work to class. We had people in work clothes and even one poor girl who showed up in her Wendy’s uniform twice.
Also not the pit, so calm down a little.

12

Not to sound all snarky, Trunk, but it’s not always that clear cut. Change class time? Sure…cause that’s always possible. The last three semesters I was in school I had exactly ONE way of fitting all my classes into my schedule. This was, in part, due to my switching majors. But even if I hadn’t, I might have lucked out and had a whopping two choices, because all the classes for my major had exactly one section, since it was a small major. I also had a fifteen minute walk from my place to campus, so if I had anything less than an hour break between classes, I didn’t have time to go home and get something to eat. Yeah, I can carry a snack, or buy something (with those wads of cash everyone knows all college students have :rolleyes: ), but I still didn’t always have time to eat it in between calsses, especially when you consider that all the other students in my major had that same break and all wanted to do their homework/studying at that time. So I either eat then, and spill food and drink all over my HW, and annoy my group members, or eat during lecture, when I sit in the back, eat quietly, and don’t bother anyone. Sure, I might spill on my notes, but they are my notes, I don’t have to hand them in, so who cares if they are presentable?

I suppose if you are such a loud eater that in an average lecture hall the prof can still hear you eating in the back over his talking, then yeah, maybe you should starve instead of eat, but even in the classes I didn’t eat in (whuich, BTW, were most of them) I could never hear anyone else eating unless they were sitting right next to, in front of, or behind me.

I will say, though, that certain classes you shuoldn’t eat in. Smaller, studio-style classes, where there is usualyl less than 30 or 40 people, and it’s in a regular room, not a lecture hall, you should make sure the prof is OK with eating first, and if he’s not, that’s understabndable. Any room with a large amount of computers or other expensive equipment shouldn’t have food or drink. Any class where you are doing some kind of experiment or project (ESPECIALLY if it’s in an actual lab) you shouldn’t have food or drink.

13

:rolleyes:

OK, grampa. Tell me about how you had to walk 20 miles to school every day, even when it was snowing and you didn’t have shoes.

None of my professors in college cared if we ate in the classroom. Moreover, none of my teachers in high school cared either, so long as we didn’t make a mess and weren’t a disruption with it.

Maybe in your day, you kids couldn’t be trusted to eat without causing a scene or making a mess, but we can. Guess we’re just a bit more mature than you were. Did they give you bibs in the dining hall and change your diapers, too?

14

I don’t know about that “entitlement generation” crap. This mid-80’s college-goer found that evening class teachers generally didn’t mind as long as it wasn’t stinky or noisy (subjective assessments made by most teachers). Night teachers realized they were dealing with people who often worked (including me, earning $$ so I could attend college), and were more accomodating. Eating between work and class wasn’t an option for me and others in the classroom.

Day classes were different. Most didn’t mind drinks (although my most boring professor teaching a boring subject at 8:00am didn’t - he usually had a room full of zombies), but no food was generally the rule.

15

I don’t really care too much about eating in class, really.

Read this though:

“That’s dinner time”!!!

No, Hon, that WAS dinner time. It’s not dinner time anymore because that’s class time. And the teacher doesn’t want you eating in her class.

That still might be dinner time on days you don’t have class. It still might be dinner time if your teacher decided to change the rule. But, one thing is for certain: it isn’t dinner time, now.

*Hey, Trunk, I saw you sleeping at your desk today. *

Well, what time was it, boss?

Two-thirty.

Sorry, boss, but that’s nap time.

16

I didn’t address eating in HS classrooms in the OP because I never even thought that was within the realm of possibility, but your HS teachers didn’t care if you ate in classroom.

That’s a lot more surprising than the college eating to be honest with you. I can’t even wrap my head around a HS classroom where kids were snacking while the teacher tried to conduct a lesson.

17

Ok Trunk, that’s valid. Most people should be able to eat before 7:30pm. I’m sure there are exceptions though.

But you really went off on a long rant that seemed to have rambles beyond the

18

It’s been over 20 years now, but I used to regularly eat dinner in one class. I worked in the college cafeteria from 4:00 until 6:15 pm. Class ran from 6:30 until 9:30, I think. I had an obscure major, so I had to take what classes were available when they were available, and, to make matters worse, I was a freshman taking a class aimed at sophomores on up and the professor didn’t eat before class, so he was hungry. Finally, I’d broken my glasses so I had to sit in the front row to see the board for the first few weeks. I did clear eating in class with the professor at the beginning of the term, though. I tried to do so as discretely as possible, but basically, if I didn’t eat during class, I wasn’t going to get dinner period.

CJ

19

I’ve never had a prof care or even mention it. I suppose if someone brought a full bucket of KFC and started shwanking their way through it, it could get distracting, but someone quietly eating a sammich wouldn’t even register in my psyche.

I’ve also been known to eat in class - when I get hungry, I get hungry. I’m paying a boat load of $$ to be there, and if I need to eat a quiet snack in the middle of a 4 hour class, I’m going to do it, period.

20

I wonder if it has to do with the significantly increased expense of college in the last 25 years or so and the somewhat (on average) older cohort now attending? If I’m paying more for something and I’m older I might expect more flexibility from the teachers.