FOR STUDENTS, there are definite penalties for being late. Whether this is a deduction of a letter grade for turning in an essay after its deadline or a specified number of tardies allotted each semester, being late can have a significant impact on a student's grade in a course. Unfortunately, on the opposite end of the spectrum, if a professor walks into class late or fails to post reading assignments on his Web site by the time that he tells his students, no repercussions or system of enforcement exist to prevent the act from happening again.
In a university setting, with buildings spread out over a considerable distance, it is important to plan time to walk to and from classes to ensure punctuality. For many classes, ten minutes is allotted to walk from place to place, which is ample time to travel between most University buildings. When a teacher fails to end class at the specified time, however, their selfish attempts to finish a lecture can seriously impede a student's ability to get to their next class on time. After contacting the Office of the Dean of Students, the Registrar's Office for the College of Arts & Sciences as well as a number of department heads, it came as a surprise that while professors mandate strict demands concerning timeliness to their students, there is no official policy in effect regarding professors who lecture through the specified end-time of their class.
William Johnson, Chair of the Economics department, said that there is no official process by which students can voice their concerns about this issue. He said that a student should first speak with their professor, informing them that they will have to leave at the designated end of the class in order to make it to their next class on time. He also said that if a professor still continues to run over in their lectures, citing five minutes or more every day as an example, that the student should go to the department chair.
While Professor Johnson offers sound advice in recommending that a student talk to their professor, other parts of his opinion fail to consider a student's perspective. When asked about a professor running two or three minutes over every day, he said that this is not an issue because it could just be the difference in clocks. But cell phone technology has synchronized time almost to the second, so this postulation is doubtful. Additionally, some professors remind students that "one minute late is late," when it comes to deadlines, and the same should be true for professors ending class on time. Two or three minutes may seem to be trivial amounts of time, but given a 10 minute break, this consumes 20 to 30 percent of the time a student has to move from place to place.
Professor Johnson duly notes that it is doubtful professors act maliciously by holding students beyond the allotted time, and also adds that, "they do not fully realize that their students have other commitments." It is easy for a professor to think that finishing their lecture is worth an extra few minutes of a student's time, and it is also true that many students would not mind staying to finish the last part of a lecture, but professors must realize that students in fact plan classes back to back. Not realizing this shows an extreme disrespect for the students on the part of professors and creates the reciprocal effect of students no longer respecting their professor.
It can be extremely awkward for a student to get up and leave class while the professor is still talking, especially in a smaller class with fewer than 30 students.First, it appears that the student does not respect the professor, even though it is the professor who is lecturing past his allotted time. Also, a student leaving early could make them miss potentially important information, and no student should be forced to choose between a grade in one class over a grade in another because their professor abuses his lecturing privileges.
The Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese puts it best in the policy outlined on their Web site: "No late work and no make-up work will be accepted," and the same must be true of ending class when they are supposed to: No information lectured after the end of class will be accepted.
Greg Crapanzano's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at gcrapanzano@cavalierdaily.com.
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