Out of Control Cornell Instructor

csfmap
Fri, 19 Nov 2010 11:57:53 +0000

I certainly agree that if the student is yawning to disrespect the professor, he’s totally out of line. But, I think the disruption from the audible yawn pales to the disruption the professor caused through his outburst. Some are praising him for dealing with this insolent student, but he could have dealt with it by making one quick quip and then getting back to his lecture without skipping a beat. Who hasn’t had a teacher say something like “If I’m boring you, feel free to leave,” or “If you’re tired, feel free to take a nap, just don’t snore", or “I know this is boring, but is it that bad?” or even a serious, “Please don’t disrupt those students who want to be here.” Instead he threw a fit and threatened 220 innocent (mostly freshmen) students with detainment, he questioned the honesty of his TA, he strangely talked about going to his “bad side”, and in his demand for politeness in the classroom, he screamed “walk the hell out”… , “ …get over it”… , then he called the yawner a loser and to top it off he asks the other students to turn the yawner in anonymously. He didn’t deal with the problem; he made a joke of himself. If you go to Campus Basement you’ll see Squeeze My Tees is selling “Yawn Outside” tee shirts and the students from the class are staging a “Yawn In”.

This is not such a big deal that I think Cornell should rebuke the guy or deal with it in any way, but I think the professor needs to learn better ways of dealing with his frustration. Maybe this is a case of the students teaching the professor and since he acknowledges in his rant that 220 students “know better”, maybe he should listen.