Oh please. Many of us went to school when no eating or drinking was allowed. How do you think we managed not to starve to death? I didn’t say it was easy, but don’t give me this ‘I have no choice’ bit.
Give some details;
What decade?
Were you working at the same time?
How many hours of school and how many hours of work?
If the instructor doesn’t mind, why should you?
If the instructor does mind, then the student has to get more creative. Carry snack bars to eat on the run, etc.
We’ve been told not to let people eat and drink in the classrooms at the community colleges and the university where I have worked. It’s a good rule for several reasons: 1. It makes a mess that shouldn’t be there; 2. it makes the bee and wasp problem worse due to #1; 3. it’s noisy as hell when someone is opening a bag and then crunching away.
The Student Entitlement Phenomenon has come up before, but I don’t feel like spending another month debating it with Those Who Were Born Entitled, so I’ll stop now.
Honestly, it never bothered me. I rarely did it, although when I was very sick for a few weeks during my junior year, I sure as hell carried a bottle of water with me everywhere. It was the only thing that could stop my coughing fits, and I think everyone prefered whatever distrubtion it made to the coughing fits.
In Art History, we weren’t allowed to bring in food and drink, but that was because of the the projection equipment. Also, nothing in the labs, but other than that most people didn’t care.
And in night school, almost everyone, including the professors, ate on occasion. We all were coming from work. I had just enough time to leave work and walk the mile or so to class every night. Now I tended to eat when I got home, but there were some nights when I broke down and bought a candy bar or such out of the vending machine. The way the porfessors saw it was that full students probably pay more attention than hungry students.
As a junior faculty member, I got a lot of 8:00 statistics courses to teach. I had no problem with the students bringing a portable breakfast with them. I’d rather they’d had some coffee, actually. I’d also occasionally bring snacks to share, myself, especially in smaller seminar classes.
Wow, nobody was allowed to eat in class when I went to college (1980-1984). A few teachers allowed drinking stuff, but absolutely no eating. I agree with that; I think it’s rude and distracting. Sorry if I sound nasty, but it’s not my problem if you’re skipping breakfast/lunch/dinner to go to class. You chose to take the course and you knew what time it was held.
I’m kind of surprised that it’s not frowned on more these days.
Most of the classrooms and all of the lecture halls at my college had a no-food policy, thank god. Of course this rule was broken quite often but usually with respect for the teacher and other students. The only time I ever saw otherwise was when this kid was eating potato chips behind me during lecture and didn’t stop when I asked him to. The professor ended up getting involved and telling him to either leave or put them away. But I never, ever saw anyone actually eat a full meal during class. That was pretty much unheard of. How rude to subject other people to your chewing, your stinky food, your crinkly packaging and your mess. Get a fucking clue and eat your dinner either before or after class.
You think eating’s bad? There are some people in my LJ knitting community who think their teacher is a fascist for not letting them knit in class! “Oh, I’m using wooden needles, so it’s quiet.” Man, I just want to whack some of my fellow entitlement generationers upside the head.
I agree with Trunk and whoever else agrees with him. It’s disrespectful to the teacher, and disrespectful to other students. Why should I, someone who waits until the end of class to eat (and yeah, I did have class from three till nine one semester–I ate at 9:30), have to sit there and smell someone else’s food, something that’s just going to make me more hungry and cranky? I bet the teacher’s hungry, too. Somehow, we manage to make it through.
And also, if it’s really your “low blood sugar” you’re worried about, then buy some of those liquid meal things (Slim-Fast, Ensure, super-milked down hot cereal) and drink that in class. All the calories, none of the mess or distraction.
I’m really not that pissed about this, but you better believe that when I become a teacher, there won’t be any eating in my class.
We had a clue in several of my night classes. Eating was allowed as long as it wasn’t noisy or smelly. I don’t know if anyone complained to the professors, but (fuzzy memory from 1983-1987 here) about 1/4 to 1/3 of the class would eat.
And the morning professor who allowed no drinks whatsoever…no one drank. We grumbled (well, at least I did as I was constantly nodding off in his class), but we didn’t drink. I missed my morning caffeine dosage, but I never felt I was entitled to have it.
I’ll ask someone else. Were you a fulltime day student or taking evening classes?
Were you working while attending?
When I did my first degree back in the 1980s it was simply unheard of. I’m studying again now and I’ve noticed that the one or two students who have tried it have been given very short shrift by the lecturers.
I take a class right after work. I often either eat a Cliff bar and swig water in the car or swing through the McDonalds drive through. Sometimes, I’ll not have time for the drive through and eat out of the vending machine while getting to class. I drink in class, but eating in front of others is rude.
I’ve been known to do this on days when I start work at 7:00 am, and don’t get lunch other than the Clif Bar at my desk while on a conference call (mute the call, its also rude to chew in someone else’s ear).
Convience foods aren’t nutritionally wonderful, but for the occational tight schedule, they are great.
I apologise if I didn’t come across correctly. I meant that changing your schedule in order to accomodate food is simply not an option for many students. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that if a student can’t change their schedule and that they have no classes where eating is allowed that they better find a way to make something work. Eat some energy bars just between class or use the 5-10mins breaks within a class to get some quick snacks in.
However, I don’t see any problem with bringing food and snacking during class as long as the professor allows it and you are not disruptive to students around you. Preferably pick a spot where nobody is close to you and perhaps towards the back of the class. I actually don’t know when the transition was made to ‘no food/drink’ to ‘perhaps food/drink’ within a school setting but for the record I didn’t enter university thinking I would eat during class. The professors actually discussed their policy prior to start of the term and I soon discovered that it wasn’t uncommon to find classes where it was ok to eat/drink.
I think it’s an unfair characterization to state that students somehow feel entitled to these things when in fact I’ve never heard a student complain about the fact that they don’t get to eat or drink in a particular class. If they need to drink so badly they can slip out of class and drink… you may have been raised different in that food and/or drinks were always strictly prohibited but the fact is many teachers these days have no problem allowing these things. Is it really ‘rude’ or ‘disrespectful’ if the teacher encourages such behaviour? If none of the students complain about it do you think it is still wrong?
That is, saramamalana is the first one I’ve ever seen or heard complain about this. Then again, I have only had 1 or 2 night classes so my observations will be biased towards the daytime classes. My night classes however did allow food to be consumed during the several 10-15min breaks in class but not during the lecture.
I just recently graduated from a 4 year state school. I recall some professors telling us they either did or didn’t allow food in their classes and some professors not saying anything at all. I’m pretty sure I never heard a professor ban water bottles in their class (unless perhaps the class involved something that might be ruined by spilled water).
Huh? I knitted through all of my classes, including those in which food was prohibited. I also used quiet wooden needles. I did ask permission for classes with a discussion format and/or fewer than 10 students, but it was always granted. (I got my S.B. in 1990 and my Ph.D. in 1997 - am I in the entitlement generation?) I will admit not having the nerve to knit in my law school classes, although in retrospect, I doubt that anyone but my Prof. Kingsley-wannabe Civ.Pro. prof. would have minded.
What’s so wrong with knitting in class? I find it a lot less distracting to other students than eating. It’s quieter than the laptop typing that goes on in most classes nowadays, too.
I just recently graduated from a 4 year state school. I recall some professors telling us they either did or didn’t allow food in their classes and some professors not saying anything at all. I’m pretty sure I never heard a professor ban water bottles in their class (unless perhaps the class involved something that might be ruined by spilled water).
I hardly ever recall there being a problem with people eating in class. That is, when it was allowed it caused so few disruptions that it was hardly noticeable and when it wasn’t allowed people respected the ban. Every so often I’d hear grumbling about not being able to eat in class, but it wasn’t very loud grumbling and people generally didn’t pull the “I’ve got a right to eat in class” thing, mainly because very few people seemed to think they did have that right.
Probably the worst result of eating in class that I saw was a little bit more mess. I remember a couple times (in four years) when someone spilled coffee. In each case they cleaned up the mess right away and apologized for the mess. Really the mess wasn’t so much spilled food as much as an increase in trash in the trash bins.
I’m not bothered by people eating in class as long as common sense and courtesy are followed. I rarely, if ever, noticed people violating common sense and courtesy with respect to food while I was in school. It was never like everyone was eating in class, typically there were only a few people eating, if anyone was eating. Other people may have very different experiences, but this was mine.
As for drinking in class, I think this is a good thing. I can get behind prohibiting sticky stuff or even everything but water. Most of the time there wasn’t anything in the classrooms that spilled water would ruin except for your notes.
[Moderator Underoos on]Trunk, if you want to go off on a rant do it here, not here. Do not post in this manner outside of The BBQ Pit again.[/Moderator Underoos on]
My entire senior year of college (1998-9) I had a class from 5pm-8pm once a week. It was only offered that once, and those hours were also the only hours the dining halls were open. No one would have dreamed of eating in class. Instead we ate whatever limited selection the food court in the student union offered that late at night. None of my other classes allowed food, either.
I don’t understand why so many in this thread are saying it’s “offensive” or “rude” to eat or drink in front of other people. Sure, if you have the world’s smelliest tunafish-garlic-and-limburger sandwich and you’re chewing like a cow, I’d be the first to toss you out of a classroom. But a muffin? A candy bar? A cup of coffee?
How can you actually be offended by someone quietly eating a sandwich beside you? Do you always eat alone? Do you need to wear earplugs and sit far from mirrors while you do?