Another Sign The Apocalypse Is Upon Us

August 8, 2003

Sssshhh. We're Taking Notes Here: Colleges look for new ways to discourage disruptive behavior in the classroom

By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

"Wanna see my new tattoo?" asks a female student during a class at the University of Arizona, turning to a male student sitting behind her. "Sure," he replies, as he and nearby students crane their necks to see the woman's freshly inked belly, oblivious to the lecture going on before them. A student walks in late and chomps on a hamburger and fries, while another answers her cellphone, even as the professor continues his lecture.

The scene is a dramatization -- part of a new public-service video shown to incoming freshmen at the university -- but officials and students say that such disruptive behavior has become all too common on the campus. Indeed, each scene is followed by interviews with students complaining about similar behavior in their own classrooms, and by playful comments from a panel of student judges -- modeled on the TV show American Idol -- who rate how annoying the behavior was.

Professors have long complained about disruptive students -- those who enter classrooms loudly and late, talk on cellphones, or read newspapers during lectures and discussions. To professors, such behavior is not only insulting, but also an obstacle to keeping their classes on track. Many students seem to share that attitude. Now, some colleges are trying to tap into that peer pressure to improve classroom civility.

On some campuses, students are the ones calling for strictures against boorish classmates. And student-affairs experts are telling professors that working with students, rather than treating them like the enemy, is the best strategy for managing classroom behavior.

As one of the student actors in the Arizona video, Rian Satterwhite, puts it: "There's a perception among the administration or people outside of the university that it's mainly just the professors who can't tolerate" annoying behavior in class. "But I think the reality is that it bothers students just as much as it bothers professors -- if not more so."

"Oftentimes," he adds, "it's the students turning around and shushing and that sort of thing."

Calls for Action

Arizona's video was inspired by feedback gathered in a survey conducted by the office of the dean of students, which asked about 750 students to describe the disruptive behavior they were seeing in their classrooms. The results revealed widespread frustration, which included complaints of "loud gum chewing and popping, pen and pencil tapping, packing up while professor is still speaking, body odor, skimpily clad individuals, and off-topic discussions," according to a report on the survey. Several students added that professors should set rules of behavior and enforce them. Every class session, some respondents suggested, should begin with a reminder to silence cellphones.

"We were kind of surprised by how stringent they want faculty members to be in dealing with disruptive behavior," says Terry Holthusen, a program coordinator in the dean's office.

But university officials decided to persuade rather than confront, working with a video-production company and some students in the drama department to communicate the survey's findings to students using humor rather than policy pronouncements.

"Students like to hear from their peer group," says Veda Kowalski, associate dean of students for judicial affairs. "The message that we're trying to get out is that students themselves define these behaviors as disruptive."

Some of the $7,000 to produce the video was provided by the Pepsi-Cola Company, in exchange for product placement -- the student judges drink Pepsi products on-screen. It remains to be seen whether the strategy pays off, but the eight-minute video, called Arizona Idol, is at least generating a positive buzz; several other universities have cited Arizona officials about using it.

Officials at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry say they had success with a similar campaign. Last year, the college hung fliers on kiosks around the campus specifying classroom-behavior guidelines endorsed by the undergraduate and graduate student governments: "Take care to minimize noisy distractions with backpacks, books, laptops," for example. Officials went over the guidelines during freshman-orientation sessions.

It was student-government leaders who called for the admonitions, says James M. Heffernan, vice president for student affairs and educational services. Though such disruptions at the Syracuse college have been "relatively mild" compared with what he's heard about elsewhere, he says, some students have "acted as if they were the only one in the room," propping their feet up on desks or chatting with friends during class. "It was sort of the New York City subway mentality -- you know, nobody would notice."

Getting Results

Since the guidelines were publicized, however, he hears fewer complaints. "I think it has turned around," he says. "You set the community's expectations at the outset, and people [are] fine."

Many colleges have established official policies for classroom behavior in the past few years, in part to give professors guidelines for ejecting problem students.

Cellphones and beepers top the list of classroom distractions -- 79 percent of students at Arizona identified them as the biggest distraction. In an opinion piece this May in The Oklahoma Daily, the campus newspaper at the University of Oklahoma, Matthew Thomas told disruptive fellow students: "You aren't significant enough to disturb an entire class to hear what time the party starts. Your social life should not interfere with the educational process."

Faculty members say disrespectful classroom behavior has increased in recent years, reports Kevin Kruger, associate executive director of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. Others say the real problem is a growing culture clash between professors and students, whose attitudes and expectations about college differ from those of students in previous generations.

Professors complain that students increasingly see themselves as customers, viewing their professors as employees rather than instructors. So some students show up for class whenever they feel like it, or send e-mail messages to professors flatly stating that they missed class because they were hung over -- and that they expect the professors to fill them in on what they missed.

"Students are not coming to class on time, and they really have expectations of faculty to accommodate student issues," says Brent Patterson, associate vice president for student affairs at Illinois State University.

Students today also seem less likely than those of previous generations to view their professors as enemies who need to be challenged, says Gary Pavela, director of judicial programs and student ethical development at the University of Maryland at College Park.

In fact, today's students "tend to be a bit more polite," he says. "There is not any ideological edge committing them to defy authority." They may not realize that their actions are disrupting others and angering professors, he suggests. When they are reminded to turn off their phones or otherwise avoid disturbing other students, they usually comply.

'Marketplace of Ideas'

One of the most common suggestions to faculty members is to include in their syllabuses basic guidelines for acceptable behavior in their classrooms. That was one of the recommendations made by a committee at Pennsylvania State University that tackled the issue in the spring.

Student representatives on the committee said they wanted professors to be clear about what constituted disruptive action because they suspected that some professors were using arbitrary judgments about disruptive behavior to throw students out of class.

At a March meeting of the Faculty Senate, a student representative, D. Joshua Troxell, gave an example: "We had a student come in just this week saying that they had been asked not to return to a classroom because they were wearing a peace symbol on their shirt. They did not stand up and say anything. They did not create any sort of disruption for the class, but they were told that, if they came in this attire again, they would not be permitted to stay in class."

Maryland's Mr. Pavela says ejecting students from class on the basis of political expression alone is "questionable legally and raises First Amendment issues at public universities." Indeed, U.S. Supreme Court decisions have upheld students' right to express themselves in class as long as they do not keep others from learning.

One professor, he says, asked him if a student could be asked to leave for wearing a studded bracelet to class. The professor said he had felt threatened, even though the student had not been disruptive or said anything threatening. Mr. Pavela says he does not think that all faculty members understand "that the classroom is not a kingdom in which there is freedom of expression for one side only. It's a marketplace of ideas."

But faculty members at Penn State voted against endorsing the committee's report, because they perceived it as mandating how professors should run their classes. "I think it would be hard to specify in the syllabus every form of behavior that is either encouraged or discouraged," says Caroline D. Eckhardt, a professor of comparative literature and English there. "If you start to make a long list, I would think that isn't the best approach."

"I also like to treat students like adults," she continues. "They do need clear signals from an instructor on what's expected in a course, but not down to a level of detail or fussiness about that that can demean the academic endeavor."

Nonetheless, many other professors want to be more proactive in heading off rude behavior in their classrooms. Bill Ellis, an associate professor of English and American studies on Penn State's Hazleton campus who served on the committee, hopes that the debate has raised awareness of the issue. "We can't allow a minority of students to hijack classes," he says, "and degrade the quality of education for everyone."

Copyright © 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education