Foreign Language Department Bans Yawning in Classroom
No, this is not a joke.
The foreign language department of Texas Tech has emailed their professors and informed them that it is now proper protocol to ask any student who yawns during class time to leave the room. That’s right, the department has determined that yawning during class is rude, distracting, or both, and so they have installed a rule that professors must now kick out any student who does so.
This new rule goes hand-in-hand with other absurd policies the foreign language department at Texas Tech has adopted as their own. The department has always been known to be complete sticklers when it comes to attendance and participation during class. Now it may be easy to think to yourself, “Well that’s not so bad…every student is expected to attend all of their classes unless something comes up which prevents them from doing so.”
The foreign language department seems to determine what is considered on time, late, and absent a little differently from the rest of the university. For example, if a student is more than three minutes late to class, they are to be considered late. Being late results in a deduction of a set amount of points to your daily participation grade, cutting it in half. If a student is five or more minutes late to class, they are to be labeled as “Absent” and thus receive no participation points for the day.
Any student who receives 4 or more of these absences will be immediately dropped to a “F” letter grade and thus will not pass the course. Where it gets ridiculous is that the individual section professors have no power over issuing a student an excused absence. If a student is, say, in the hospital and forced to miss a day of class, all of their paperwork (and by God I mean absolutely ALL of it) must pass through the department’s administrative staff. They will contact the hospital involved to confirm that your paperwork is valid and not forged.
This is not something that is unique to the TTU foreign language department. Texas Tech, like any other credible university in the country, takes the submission of forged official documents and plagiarism very seriously. In no way am I arguing their process when this type of situation occurs.
But what if something else comes up that prevents you from making it to class? For example, what if an individual was to wake up one morning and find that their dog is very ill and they must be taken to a veterinary hospital? A situation such as this could come up completely at random and without any prior notice. As a matter of fact, I have first-hand experience with something like this happening to me. Even with all of the paperwork from the vet, the department still failed to recognize what had happened as an emergency that should have permitted me from missing a day of class.
So the foreign language department, without actually saying the words, was telling me that my dog’s health is not as important as a day of learning the differences between imperfect and preterite conjugations. Or, to be a little more dramatic about it, they essentially stated to me that I should have just left my dog at home drowning in her own vomit and gone to class instead.
It’s this lack of compassion or even acknowledgment of a 20-something student’s other responsibilities that make me really dislike the department. I am very aware of (and very well versed in) some student’s forging of doctor’s notes and creating some very imaginative excuses for missing class, and so I don’t blame them for requiring everyone to go to class. I’ve taken plenty of courses where the professor takes roll every day and places a significant amount of importance on coming to class.
Where I believe the foreign language department fails is in creating an atmosphere that is inviting for a student to develop a relationship with their professor. Throughout my years here at Texas Tech, I’ve learned that it can be quite important and beneficial to establish a relationship with your professors. Not only will they be more susceptible to help with any difficulties you may be having in class, but they are also more likely to be helpful in suggesting other courses in the department and introducing you to new interests. The foreign language department, however, has created a system that is not only uninviting to the students to have one-on-one relationships with the professors, but one that scares them away from attempting to do so.
Now I’m not saying that these individual section professors are rude or inefficient at teaching the material. What I am saying, though, is that these section professors are themselves seemingly scared of the foreign language department heads. Any time I’ve attempted to email or talk with one of my professors about, say, being a few minutes late to the next day of class or missing a class in the future because I’m traveling, their response is always to point me towards the department heads. They themselves do not hold any power whatsoever to excuse an absence or showing up late to class, no matter what the situation is. They have, in essence, been so thoroughly trained to follow the rules outlined by the few people in charge of the department that they seem to have lost any sort of compassion or understanding themselves.
Unfortunately for us students, this has resulted in the heads of the department completely overstepping their boundaries as rule makers to the point of absurdity.
This new rule for section professors to follow concerning the yawning of students during class was first brought to my attention during class one day when a fellow classmate of mine had fallen asleep. Our professor is younger and relates well to us students through common interests, and so he simply woke him up and told him to go out and splash some water on his face to wake up. While he was out stretching and waking himself up, our professor told the rest of the class about an email he had received detailing these new rules concerning the dismissal of a student for sleeping or yawning during class.
Of course when he told us about these new rules he was supposed to follow, myself and the rest of the class erupted in a simultaneous “Are you kidding me?!” uproar. Some people were talking to our professor about how ridiculous this new rule was, and how it was impossible to prevent yourself from yawning 99% of the time. He agreed with us, but stood firm in his stance that he has to follow these rules or else he will be in trouble with the department. This is his job, after all, so who could blame him for doing what he was told to do so that he didn’t lose his mean of income?
The department can place rules on us students that we are to be on time and no later to class than what our scheduled time is. They can keep us in class from the very second class starts until the final second of the scheduled time of our class. By way of University Policies, they can allow us a minimum amount of absences before automatically failing the class. They can continue to treat their individual section professors as children who are incapable of making their own decisions. They can even do investigatory follow ups to documentation turned in to allow for “Excused Absences” (which, by the way, is different than simply not counting a student as being absent on a particular day. The student will still receive 0 participation points for the day and will not be allowed to make-up any assignments that were missed on the day he or she missed.)
Dismissing a student from class based on an act which is both physiological and a part of the human body’s evolutionary history, though, is an outrage.
This new rule lingers very, very closely on the fringe of being a violation of an enrolled student’s rights. While I am still waiting (read: hoping) to receive a copy of the email from an anonymous source within the department, if what I’ve been told is true, these new rules demand the attention of my fellow co-eds. While the university has guidelines that we, the student body, agree to abide by, there are also certain responsibilities and rules that the University is required to provide for us. Forcing a student out of the classroom for an act that they can not possibly be held responsible for is a breach of the agreement between the University and its students, plain and simple.
If it is only the foreign language department that has implemented this new rule and no others on campus, then it is my opinion that it needs to be brought to the attention of University officials. Perhaps the foreign language department needs to be reminded that we, the students, are paying them a hefty fiscal price in order to be educated and eventually receive our degree. We are not, however, paying them to be punished for a brief and momentary act that the human body performs at random. Next thing you know we’ll be dropped a letter grade for sneezing, and be asked to leave for scratching an itch on our head.
Uneducated Opinions 