<p><em>prepares to be flamed</em> I actually don’t have any rules about cell phone use (or anything else), and I have never had a problem with a student’s cell phone going off in class. I have to admit that I myself have had incoming calls during seminars, faculty meetings, and administrative meetings–not in the past two years, but before that. My previous phone was noisy going off, and people rarely called, so when I realized that I had forgotten to shut it off, I felt that the odds were better to assume (hope) that I wouldn’t be called.</p>
<p>During exams, I have multiple grad student proctors with me–mainly so that we can go up to students and answer their questions about exam problems. This keeps us in and out of the rows pretty randomly. In classes of about 100 students, I don’t know all of the students by the first midterm, but I normally do know them all by sight by the second one. So that perhaps helps also.</p>
<p>Some time ago, the Asst. VP for Academic Personnel issued a long set of “rules” for the faculty at my university. I read through it, anticipating that I would soon be instructed not to throw bricks at my students–it got really absurd. I am of the anti-rule generation, in any event. </p>
<p>In the largest lecture halls (not the lecture halls where I teach), we also have signs advising the students "No cell phones, no [whatever], no skateboarding down the aisles, no impromptu dance competitions, no flash mobs, no . . . " This also starts to get absurd.</p>
<p>All of that said, actually I do sympathize with the professors who need the cell phone rules, because of a subset of the students in their classes. I’m probably fortunate to be teaching the classes I normally teach.</p>