Every semester begins the same way. There are new classes, new students, new challenges and one constant: in every class, someone will pull out their cellphone.
Cellphones are, save for a few outlying cases, absent throughout the first twenty minutes of class. As the clock on the wall ticks past the twenty five minute mark, things take a turn for the worst. Students begin to shift in their seats. They look back and forth from the clock to their bag. Then, they’ll hear a slight buzz.
They will ask, “I wonder who messaged me,” but they don’t really care. They just want a break, a 30 second advertisement if-you-will. So, they’ll check and see if anyone is looking, slide their hand into their bag, and with a slight press of the power button: Soma at last!
What these students fail to realize in the moment of their metaphorical and sometimes realistic high is the effect their actions have on the classroom. If college is a means to improve one’s critical thinking skills, knowledge and creativity, then discourse in the classroom is a means to success. Why then would any student pursuing an education curb public discourse in order to see a comment on their Facebook status?
These actions remind me of how Neil Postman described televised news and its “Now . . . this” ideology. In it, reasonable public discourse is cut off by 45-second coverage limits and 30-second commercials for toothpaste. Worse, in televised news, these interruptions are unwanted and uncontrolled by the viewer whereas here it seems students are willing to interrupt discourse themselves.
This inevitably leads to a tug of war between those who use their phones in classrooms, or the student body as a whole, and the professors who are trying to lecture.
Many professors have fought back with these students by establishing bullish rules about what happens should a student’s phone accidentally go off in class. These strategies range from the instructor answering the phone instead of the student to every person’s phone being taken away.
Regardless of these approaches, the reaction is the same. Students let out a resounding sigh, “How dare they.”
Indeed. If it is not one extreme it is the next. We are in college classes being treated as if we were in grade school.
Perhaps that mark is not too far off. After all, our childish behavior has led our student body to believe this is the one rule that does not apply.
Like all conflicts, a compromise must be made. If we wish ourselves to be rid of overzealous rules about cellphone usage and wish to be treated as adults, we must be responsible enough to put aside our world of distractions for short periods of time. Who knows, perhaps a life without soma is livable after all.
