Rude Days in Ivied Halls

Some college students act worse than first-graders. They walk into class late, ignore professors, chat on cell phones, gossip among themselves, nap, read the newspaper and leave early. And if teachers give them the low grades they deserve, they curse, hurl insults and threaten the instructors. They need a lesson in civility.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has documented this escalating trend on campuses across the nation. Disruptive students are acting out at Ivy League campuses, state college campuses, large universities, small colleges. They are harassing, stalking, intimidating and even physically attacking professors. The hostility goes well beyond youthful student rebellion.

To combat the escalating problem, professors are organizing civility task forces, publishing behavior guidelines, adding rules of classroom decorum to their syllabuses and generally laying down the law.

That’s one way to do it; they could also throw the bums out and make room for students who want to learn. Some administrators fear lawsuits if they crack down. Some colleges simply don’t want to lose the student fees and tuition. Some, determinedly, want to salvage all who enter. When all else fails, a growing number of professors are deciding to quit.

Classroom etiquette is a mirror of future behavior, and if today’s students expect the rewarding jobs of coming decades they better learn respectable behavior, now.