COLLOQUY

By ALISON SCHNEIDER

It's every professor's nightmare: losing control of the class. And if anecdotal evidence counts for anything, it's happening more and more.

Professors are complaining that their courses are

ALSO SEE: Join the debate: Is rudeness by students in the classroom on the rise? If so, what should professors and colleges do about it? (The responses) Classroom demeanor: an excerpt from one syllabus FOR SUBSCRIBERS: More stories from this week's The Faculty section

being hijacked by "classroom terrorists." Among the milder affronts: Students are arriving late and leaving early, napping in the back of the room, carrying on running conversations, reading the newspaper, even bringing portable televisions into class.

The hard-core infractions range from insubordination to outright intimidation. When a chemistry professor at Virginia Tech asked his class how to solve an equation, a student in the back of the room shouted, "Who gives a s---?" When a scholar at Utah State University refused to change a grade, a student screamed at her, "Well, you goddamned bitch, I'm going to the department head, and he'll straighten you out!" That professor may have gotten off easy; a historian at Washington State University was challenged to a fight when a student disliked the grade he'd received. Other professors have been stalked by angry students, and a few physically attacked.

Some scholars argue that academe has never been above a good slugfest. But close encounters of the uncivil kind are leaving many professors stunned, even shaken. How, they ask, did the decorous world of academe disintegrate into a free-for-all?

Peter Sacks, the pseudonym of a journalist-turned-professor, ponders that question in Generation X Goes to College (Open Court, 1996), which he wrote after teaching droves of apathetic students who were more interested in chatting on their cell phones than listening to lectures.

His book struck a chord. Scholars have started publishing articles on the problem; universities are offering workshops. Last fall, the cover story of the newsletter of the National Teaching and Learning Forum was devoted to "Teaching and Crowd Control."

Undergraduate insolence grew so bad recently at Virginia Tech that the Faculty Senate formed a "Climate Committee" to look into the situation. A case in point: The head of

Tim Rue for The Chronicle Indiana's Chana Kai Lee: Students are "more disruptive because they know they can be that way with relative impunity."

the Senate, Skip Fuhrman, returned to his office last year after giving a sociology exam and found a message on his answering machine: "You fat f--- with yellow teeth! You hump!" a student bellowed. The cause of her consternation: She couldn't resell her textbook.

Most students aren't ill-mannered brats, professors say, but it takes only a few bad apples to spoil the pie. "Even a small proportion of rowdy and uncontrolled students ruins the whole atmosphere," says Henry H. Bauer, a professor of chemistry and science studies at Virginia Tech. "It's very difficult to concentrate if there's a buzz of conversation and giggles of laughter. It's very demoralizing."

"The problem is much worse than it was," says his colleague Jack A. Cranford, an associate professor of zoology and ecology, and chairman of the Climate Committee. "I think the incidence of this in the last 10 years has doubled, if not tripled, in terms of the amount and the severity. Things were much more respectful when I entered the professoriate."

The question remains, Why? Many of the explanations being bandied about have the touchy-feely, pop-psychology tone of the Oprah show. "Latch-key children," "media violence," "substance abuse," people say. Parents are setting poor examples. High schools are falling down on the job. Religious groups aren't as involved as they should be.

"If you haven't civilized young people by the time they get to college, I don't think you're going to civilize them at all," says Stephen L. Carter, a professor at Yale Law School, whose book Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy will be published in April by BasicBooks. Does he agree that students today possess a diminished sense of decorum? "Yes, I do," he responds politely.

Part of the problem, scholars explain, is a crisis of authority in this country that leaves no one above question. "Television and politics have defrocked the social lives of adults and made everything look hypocritical," says Paul A. Trout, an associate professor of English at Montana State University, who has written about classroom conflict. "Kids develop a certain contempt for adults as a result. They come in questioning: 'Why is this an A? Why is this a B? Why am I reading this?' They're suspicious of all the rules established by adults."

At Montana State, the problem grew serious enough that in 1995, the university created a task force to look into disruptive classroom behavior, especially in large lectures. That's where the problem is most egregious, professors say. Not only is it easy to act up if you're 60 rows back in a cavernous lecture hall; it's a reason to act out, explains Mary Deane Sorcinelli, associate provost for faculty development at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and director of its Center for Teaching. "I can see it from the student's perspective," she says. "'What's the point? I'm sitting here with 300 students. This isn't civil to me.'"

The fact that these large lectures are often required

Mark Ludak for The Chronicle Gerald Amada of City College of San Francisco: "Everything we do in a class conveys something about ourselves and our moral values."

courses pours gasoline on the fire. Students who choose to take a course show up interested in the subject matter. But students who have to take a course often come with a chip on their shoulder.

Learning for learning's sake, scholars maintain, has flown out the window. Today's students are more interested in finding a job than in debating the fine points of Foucault. Anything that won't enhance their marketability is ripe for disrespect.

On top of that, students are paying money -- often big money -- for a degree, and in the minds of many students, that puts them in the driver's seat. "Consumerism is taking over college campuses," says Kathy K. Franklin, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. "I'm hearing more students saying, 'After all, I pay your salary, and since I pay your salary, I should be able to tell you when I want to come to class and when my paper should be due.' Students live in a Wal-Mart society, where it's convenience that counts."

That said, Ms. Franklin thinks the brouhaha over bad manners is overblown. She's been researching the history of undergraduate life for years and says that students have been making mischief ever since universities opened their doors. In the 13th century, professors at the University of Bologna were so terrorized by their students -- who beat them up if they didn't like their grades -- that they formed guilds to protect themselves.

In the United States, in the 1820s, there was the "Bread and Butter" rebellion at Yale University. Students, distressed by demanding classes, started throwing food at professors in the dining hall and beaning them with plates and silverware that they tossed out of windows. They also took a fancy to cannonballs, which they rolled -- in the dead of night -- through the dormitories, where their professors were sleeping.

"Historically, what's happening today isn't unusual," Ms. Franklin says. "Are students today different from students 10 years ago? Probably, because of demographic changes, consumerism, K-to-12 experiences. But is this a new trend? No."

Professors haven't changed much, either, she adds. They were griping about student incivility hundreds of years ago, too. What's different,

Tim Ivy for The Chronicle Kathy K. Franklin of the University of Arkansas: "Consumerism is taking over college campuses."

she notes, is that today's academics receive less respect than the generation of scholars who trained them. Because their predecessors were held in higher esteem, the cheekier conduct of today's students seems particularly insulting. It probably wouldn't have fazed Yale professors in the 1820s, she says.

Chana Kai Lee, an assistant professor of history at Indiana University, finds that argument hard to buy. Last October, a student who had been misbehaving for weeks during her U.S.-history lectures jumped out of his seat, leaped over a row of chairs, tripped, and headed out the door, she says. He returned with some campus newspapers, which he shared with two seatmates. The three students spent the rest of the period reading the papers, passing around a game of tic-tac-toe, and loudly gabbing. Ms. Lee repeatedly asked them to settle down, but they ignored her. When she tried to talk to them after class, she says, one of them grabbed his genitals and pumped his hand up and down.

Another student in the course kept telling Ms. Lee's superiors that she was missing from class, even though, Ms. Lee says, she was there. Then came the harassing phone calls, the first of which contained obscene, racist language. An insulting anonymous letter soon followed.

Ms. Lee filed grievances against the four students. The result: four slaps on the wrist, she says. None of the students were suspended or expelled. Three received warnings, she says, and the one who was accused of making the obscene gesture -- and who subsequently dropped her class -- was found not guilty of that offense, although he admitted that he did cause the other disruptions.

Richard McKaig, dean of students at Indiana, says privacy concerns prohibit the university from commenting on disciplinary proceedings. But, he adds, "just because a student is not suspended or expelled doesn't mean that a serious sanction wasn't given. The incident was taken seriously, and the sanctions that were given, we think, were appropriate."

Ms. Lee disagrees: "Students have become more disruptive because they know they can be that way with relative impunity.

Classroom Demeanor: an Excerpt From One Syllabus It is your responsibility to attend class. If you miss a class meeting for any reason, you will be held responsible for all material covered and announcements made in your absence. ... Lecture attendance is neither required nor noted. However, BE ON TIME AND REMAIN FOR THE ENTIRE PERIOD OR DO NOT COME AT ALL. This class is too large to have people crawling over each other or standing in front of the projector while trying to find a seat or leaving after the lecture has begun. Arriving late and/or leaving early is inconsiderate of your colleagues. This class is also too large for chit-chat, please do not. You are unaware of how far your voices carry in FAV 150 and how disturbing it is to your classmates to be forced to endure your idle chatter and giggling. The students who sit near you are not interested in your romantic lives, how out-of-touch you think your parents are, how stupid you think your teachers are, etc. You may not realize how disturbing your "private" conversations are when others are trying to listen to a lecture. ... Everyone who registers for this class is an adult. You are legally able to marry without parental consent, buy a home, pay taxes, vote, work, budget your money, defend your country in military service, etc. You should also be adult enough not to disturb others. Mindless talking during class is immature, inconsiderate behavior. Please ask questions or make comments about the art work that will benefit the entire class, but leave the chit-chat in the halls where it belongs. --From a course syllabus by Professor Susanne J. Warma, Utah State U.

I would never have thought that anything could happen in the classroom that would make me mentally unprepared to return there. But I've been thoroughly demoralized. This has been the biggest battle of my career."

She's not fighting it alone. Since her debacle, she has learned of other lapses in campus decorum, and some 30 faculty members have rallied around her, forming the Committee for a Respectful Learning Environment.

Indiana had taken steps in the past to deal with the problem. Last year, the university published guidelines on dealing with disruptive students. And administrators have urged professors to add civility clauses to their syllabi, describing appropriate classroom behavior.

But such steps, professors complain, are little more than a Band-Aid on a bleeding wound. Ms. Lee included a civility clause in her syllabus -- which, she points out, the four undergraduates studiously ignored, even when she repeatedly invoked it.

Susanne J. Warma, an associate professor of art history at Utah State University, has the same complaint. Her syllabus pointedly asks students to refrain from "idle chatter and giggling. The students who sit near you are not interested in your romantic lives, how out-of-touch you think your parents are, how stupid you think your teachers are."

The effect: not much. Ms. Warma walked out of one class after spending 10 minutes fruitlessly trying to shut her students up.

So what's a beleaguered professor to do? For starters, they should use day one to lay down the law -- what they can live with and what they can't, says Ms. Sorcinelli, of the University of Massachusetts. As associate provost, she's dealt with classroom misbehavior since the early '90s, when a professor fled from one late-afternoon class because a group of students showed up drunk. Since then, she's run workshops and written a how-to chapter on coping with surly students for the Handbook of College Teaching (Greenwood Press, 1994).

Try to connect with students, Ms. Sorcinelli advises. Learn their names, have them fill out questionnaires, come to class early and work the aisles, stay late to encourage students to talk with you.

If students are yammering, she says, make eye contact, stop the lecture until they quiet down, direct a question to the person sitting next to the offender, or walk over to where the student is sitting ("the Oprah Winfrey design"). If all else fails, have a tete-a-tete after class on the do's and don'ts of classroom etiquette. Above all, she warns, avoid a public blowup. Bring in the department head or the dean if necessary.

And remember, say conduct coaches, that the problem might be you. "As we talk about incivility among the student body, we should also talk about incivility among the teaching body," says P.M. Forni, a professor of Italian at the Johns Hopkins University and co-director of the Hopkins Civility Project, a constellation of academic activities focusing on manners and mores. "Teachers can be overbearing. They can adopt behavior that can mortify students. They can exhibit a purported intellectual superiority, belittle students, use sarcasm in a way that's hurtful."

Showing up late to class, arriving unprepared, turning a blind eye to rudeness, or using profanity encourages students to do the same, says Gerald Amada, co-director of the mental-health program at the City College of San Francisco and author of Coping With the Disruptive College Student (College Administration Publications, 1994). "Everything we do in a class conveys something about ourselves and our moral values. If we're teaching brilliantly, but in the classroom uncivil behavior occurs and we ignore it, then we're also teaching something else -- that those behaviors are permissible. By default, we encourage the behavior."

But what, professors wonder, should they do when their gender or race is at the root of student rudeness? Male students are far more likely to try to run roughshod over female professors -- especially those working in male-dominated disciplines like chemistry, physics, and math, scholars say.

But race is the real clincher, Ms. Lee says. "Students could only see me as the permissive mammy, who could be controlled, or the stereotypical sinister black bitch, who needed to be challenged at every turn." She lacked the "cultural currency" to command their respect, she says. "When I resisted, my students felt authorized to resist me even more."

These days, she's finding it tough to resist at all. After five weeks in the classroom this semester, she decided to take a leave of absence. "I kept having these moments when I would think about what happened and would start to feel afraid and angry. What if this crazy madness happens again?"

Ms. Warma, of Utah State, is also thinking of leaving the classroom. "If you go in and do your job and every day the behavior tells you the job is not worth doing, it's very discouraging. No one is doing it for the fabulous salary."

What's really disheartening, professors say, is the lack of support they get from the administration when the problems arise. In Colonial days, college presidents would flog unruly students. Now administrators cower at the idea of kicking hellions out of class. The specter of a lawsuit, Mr. Amada says, makes universities fearful to take a stand against incivility.

Many professors themselves are afraid to come forward. "It doesn't take much for your colleagues to wonder if you're competent," Ms. Lee says.

Despite the difficulties, not everyone is pessimistic. Guilia Sissa, the head of the classics department at Johns Hopkins and co-director of the Civility Project there, saw a student head for the door during a lecture. Where was he going? To watch a basketball game, he replied. On the spot, she discussed the appropriateness of his behavior with him, and he sat back down. He also took two more classes with her. One of them was a course she taught with Mr. Forni. Its title: "Civility, Manners, and Politeness."

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