I’m a current college student.
None of my professors have ever stated anything one way or another about eating in class.
That said, I haven’t done it, nor have I ever seen anyone else do so.
You say “tried” like the teacher wasn’t succeeding. We still weren’t allowed to talk to each other or anything, but if someone had a muffin during first period and wanted to nibble at it a lot of teachers didn’t say anything. Same with a bag of chips or something.
As long as you didn’t make a mess or cause a distraction, a lot of my teachers in high school just didn’t care.
:rolleyes:
Dude, get a job.
See, that’s a double entendre. Because not only is it a way of saying that you are the victim of a foolish consistency, but if you did get a job, like the one I had when I went to law school, and then you sat in class from the second you got off work (save travel time) until eight or nine o’clock, you’d realize that it’s actually kind of difficult to learn the complex concepts taught in any school worth its salt if your blood sugar is so low you can’t concentrate.
–Cliffy
Did you just ignore the rest of the paragraph where she went on to explain why that was dinnertime? Because maybe everyone had been in class for the past two hours with a ten minute break in between? If you’re taking an evening class, which usually covers dinner hours, then odds are you’re dealing with non-traditional students, which there are increasingly larger numbers of. These people really don’t have time to grab something before class because they’re coming directly from work. Trunk, you’re over-reacting and that’s making you look unreasonable and like a crank. Going from noon to nine at night without eating just makes everyone miserable, professor included.
As for my classes, none of my professors have ever had a problem with people eating or drinking in class as long as they were quiet about it, especially the night classes. Heck, in one, we even had people sign up to bring treats for the break time, which we could continue eating during class. It’s really a non-issue, since I’ve never seen anyone be disruptive with their food or drink.
I’ve never had the “No Eating” rule come up either time I was in school. However, the second time around, I was a diabetic with much more control problems than I have now. I always had something with me in case my sugar crashed, and if it did, I didn’t give a rat’s ass if there was a rule or not. I always told the profs at the beginning of the semester that I was diabetic, and they were pretty cool about it.
Usually, I had a bottle of water with me, and I tried to be as inoffensive as possible taking a swig.
When I was in college, the rule was that eating and drinking was okay if the class was over an hour long.
Look, as long as I have someplace to plug in my George Foreman grill in class, there won’t be a problem.
At my first school, a community college, not only was eating and drinking forbidden, you couldn’t bring food beyond a certain point in the lobby. The halls were completely a NO FOOD OR DRINK zone. However, security’s genius idea to enforce this was to take all the trash cans out of the class room. During cold and flu season, this was absolutly disgusting.
When I transferred to a four year, we were allowed to eat in the classroom-the only exceptions being the library and, of course, the computer labs. Sometimes you’d have three hour classes running from 3 to 9, and you had to eat something.
Quite honestly, I see no reason for forbidding it. Once you’re in college, you should be able to deal with some distraction.
Well, I’ll join Trunk on the unreasonable cranky side. If you end up with a schedule that allows zero time to eat from noon to nine, then you need to adjust your schedule.
I’m from the generation where there was no eating or drinking allowed in class, and I don’t recall anyone dying from starvation. I wonder how they managed that.
It’s interesting to read how many people address how eating and drinking noises annoy the other students or the teacher. I always though it was simply a litter thing. There are always a few slobs who ruin it for everybody by leaving candy wrappers and spilled drinks behind. Most schools don’t have the janitorial staff to clean the classrooms the same way they clean up the cafeteria. A lot of public places have this rule as well and it’s nothing to do with eating noises. It’s strictly a litter issue.
I was a full-time college student with a full-time job and I never ate in class. It’s disrespectful to the people who have to sit next to you. I know I don’t want to hear someone else’s food sounds, especially in class.
Figure it out, you’re college students after all. Finding time for a snack before or after class shouldn’t be this difficult.
I’m one of the poor abused decrepit put-upon serfs who have to rush straight from work to get to my evening class with no time to eat…woe, wail, flail, sob…
You know what? I deal with it by either pre-packing a portable snack to eat in the car on the way, or snack at work on break to tide me over.
Holy crap, I can’t believe people feel themselves to be so entitled that the school and professor should bend their policies around individual student schedules.
You read the time in the syllabus. If putting off dinner for 2 or 3 hours is too much for you to handle, then don’t register for class. Kee-rist on a slide rule, pre-make a friggin’ dinner the night prior and stick it in your friggin’ fridge to eat when you get home.
The only reason I care one way or another is because people don’t always clean up after themselves. I don’t want to drop my books in the puddle of condensation left by your soda cup or get ketchup on my clothing. And I used those examples because those are things that have happened to me.
I’m in my second year of college now, after transferring from one campus of my university to another. At the campus I was at my first year, many buildings prohibited food & drink in signs, but it was mostly ignored in the hallways. The professors had the choice of whether to allow it or not in the classrooms, but I never saw any one of them enforce it if somebody started sneaking in M&Ms or something. Every professor allowed drinks in the classroom, at the very least water (this is in Arizona)… it really seems sort of strange to me that they wouldn’t. I’ve never seen drinks as distracting.
On this campus, there are no signs anywhere about food or drink. Only one of my teachers addressed it (saying that since class starts at noon she’s fine with people eating in the classroom as long as it’s quiet), and generally her classroom is the only one where I’ve seen people eat. I also find it distracting if it’s more than, say, a bag of Cheez-Its or a yogurt or something. There’s a woman (in her 30s or 40s… not the ‘entitlement generation’, I would think) who brings a McDonald’s meal in there every class period and it drives me crazy because it makes me so hungry. Bah!
Overall I’ve seen the attitude sort of… eat if you have to, but don’t make a distraction of it, and don’t eat loud foods. I’ve never eaten during a class, I generally make the time to have a snack before or after my class. I just can’t see bringing in an entire meal, at all.
Oh, as for high school–food and drinks (except for water) were prohibited during class-time. Teachers would get in major trouble if they let their students eat or drink sodas or juice during class. But they were allowed to eat in the classrooms if they didn’t make a mess and if class wasn’t going on, so we had a lot of kids treating favorite teachers’ classrooms as cafeterias, especially since ours was so tiny and had no air conditioning.
Is eating in college classrooms OK these days?
I must admit that this “eating in class” thing crept up on me during my years of teaching. It seems that all of a sudden students are snacking away during lectures. I’d prefer that people don’t eat in class, but OTOH I tolerate it since many students are running from class to class or job to class. The understanding is that the eating does not disturb the flow of the class – no smacking sounds, no slurping, nothing of that nature. If it doesn’t bother me or anyone else in class, what’s the big deal? AFAIK there are no university rules against it.
That’s alot easier said than done. I can tell you right now that almost all of my 3rd year classes offer me very little flexibility in the way my schedule is made. Out of the 10 classes I am taking 9 of them are mandatory and only offered in one timeslot per semester (they are not offered during summer months either). It’s also the case with me that if I try to switch my schedule around to next semester in order to accomodate this semester I end up with scheduling conflicts.
Just to say there are likely many students who have no choice in this matter. Do you think we look forward to eating in class? I’d MUCH rather eat at home or in the cafeteria and I certain take this into consideration when I build my schedule.
Most of my profs were ok with eating in class, as long as it wasn’t distracting. I even had a class that I could eat in in high school. It was a night class, taught from 6-8:30, and everyone brought dinner with them, even the teacher. There was enough discussion time that he had time to eat, too.
The mess factor is indeed an issue. Let’s face it, people can be slobs. Fortunately, that wasn’t a problem with my evening classes - I don’t know what would have happened if it was. However, I wasn’t the only person working full-time and attending school full-time, although we were definitely a minority. I expect someplace I’m paying several thousand dollars per semester (factor in inflation from the mid-80s if this seems low, and then remember that college costs have risen faster than the rate of inflation) to make reasonable accomodations. If eating in the classroom was a big enough distraction to learning that people (note plural) would complain, then I would expect adults to work together with a compromise.
Plus, it trained me to multitask my meals. Then, I had time for lunch. Now, I have time to pick up lunch, and from 12-2 the sounds and smells of eating fill the working environment.
I’d also like to point out that nobody I’ve met expects to be able to eat in class. I don’t understand where these ‘entitlement’ comments are coming from since the professors will even say “I don’t mind drinking or eating as long as you aren’t disruptive” or “Absolutely no eating during class. However you may drink whatever you like.”
Obviously labs and other similar types of classrooms have eating/drinking prohibited. And on the flip side I’ve had professors who bring drinks of their own (EVERY class he brought a coke). I’ve never seen any students complain about an eating/drinking policy either.
I am curious:
I wonder statistically if the Pro vs. Anti “Eating neatly in Class” breaks down between full time students and part time working students. I would expect it to and this would oddly enough become a class issue about classes.
I was a full time worker but my hours were 7 to 3:30 most days. I almost never ate in class except when I had to work overtime in an emergency before a class and only had enough time to grab a meal and finish it up at beginning of the class.
I really don’t think it is a problem for people to eat in class.
I had a mixed experience. Some teachers wouldn’t allow it at all. I had one teacher who banned eating or drinking “unless you bring enough for everyone”. I took 3 classes with that professor and only once saw someone take her up on that and bring in cookies for the entire class. I had another prof. who is known for bringing donuts into class a few times a semester but disallows gum chewing in his class. Most professors were OK with a drink in class. Some had no restrictions (well, no alcohol allowed), others insisted on a sport bottle.
I see where a lot of people were coming from with eating in class, but I still think it is rude, disrespectful, and annoying. The worst was this one girl that always brought a Carl’s Jr. order or In-n-Out into biology lecture. Drove me nuts.