By Anthony Mejanoff
Students walking into class in the middle of a lecture can be very disrupting. Whenever the door opens, the majority of students shift their eyes away from the instructor and to the person walking through the door.
Some instructors even take time out of the class to ask for the person’s name to mark them tardy. In one of my classes, there are about 5 to 10 students coming in tardy.
Some instructors can’t even complete a full lecture without getting interrupted by these tardy students. Sometimes the instructor has to backtrack to keep everyone up to speed.
Students that constantly come to class late are not responsible. Maybe they just don’t care or think that it is okay, but obviously it’s not, because it effects not only the person tardy but their fellow students.
Instructors even give lectures on tardiness when they realize it is becoming a problem, yet the students continue to arrive late. Some students walk in with 20 minutes left in class.
What is the point of even coming to class that day? They have already missed so much.
Sure, there may be traffic on the freeway or the bus may be running late, but if students are always stuck in traffic, they should leave earlier, maybe even drop the class after the first two weeks if they feel they will be chronically tardy.
If students realize their bus is always running late, take an earlier one. Being at school early isn’t a bad thing. People can always sit in the library and study while waiting for their class to begin.
Instructors give out a syllabus at the start of each semester. The syllabus states that three tardies equal one absence. Teachers might put a limit on how many absences a student can have before being dropped by the teacher. Some teachers might count a certain number of tardies as an absence.
Reminding people of school policies, sometimes changes the students’ behavior but not always. Although some instructors will drop students that have exceeded their absence limit, most instructors have not gone through with it.
Maybe it’s a way to scare students into being on time, but it isn’t too effective. Students sometimes feel cheated out of a class because instructors get interrupted and don’t get everything they had planned for that day accomplished, setting us back in our schedule.
