Meza
Avelino Meza
ENG – 101 - QAL
Professor Baptiste
27 October 2020
While Respect is a 2-Way Street, this is Not the Right Way
It begs the question, what had to happen to professor Lawrence Thomas to have to resort
to such measures when a student uses their phone. It’s such an unusual method that he has come
up with that I honestly have never heard about before and I can understand why it can be quite
infuriating to both sides. Phones have become a thing that us teenagers have become so attached
to for no good reason, me included, and it can be unhealthy at points and even get some people
aggressive for no reason. We live in an era where phones are the most important thing to some
people, even while paying thousands of dollars to go to college. I still end up thinking about it,
and I disagree with the Professor’s protest to walk out of class because it is quite unprofessional,
there are much better ways to deal with the situation and he’s being unfair to the rest of the
students.
Professor Lawrence walking out of class when a single student sends a text is very
unprofessional because he is letting his personal feelings get in the way of his teaching. It is
almost childish of him to walk out, almost the same as a child crying because his parents don’t
pay attention to him, I can understand that it can be annoying, and not just for him, for everyone,
but it just does not sound like something a professor should do. Although the student sounded
very egocentric and cocky, he did make a fair point, which was that no matter what, the professor
will still end up getting paid at the end of the day and one person should not let him ruin his
class. Like the student in the reading said “...highlight his own selfishness...” because although I
honestly think that was not what he was going for, it still looks like such and again, it’s his job
and he cannot be acting this way.
There are 100 other ways that he could’ve gone about this, but he just had to go and
choose the more controversial one and the one that would cause the most trouble. Like Gerald
Amada said, the best way he could’ve dealt with this was to ask the student to leave the class,
and if said student refused, to write them up. Writing the student up would’ve saved a lot of
trouble and we would not be having this discussion right now. He also could’ve just simply
ignored the student since there was around 400 in that same class, as long as said student was not
disrupting class for the rest of the students. Even calling them out and telling them to stop using
their phone would have been better than walking out of class.
Like I said, the class has 400 students, and you cannot let the misconduct of one student
affect the other 399. The student who disagreed with what the professor did made another fair
point which was that the other students are basically wasting their money because the professor
cannot get over himself. The work of one student cannot affect the whole class because this is
not in middle school anymore, you cannot say “Next person that talks, the whole class is getting
a 0”. We’re adults in college and there may be a few childish people out there but that does not
mean that other people are not willing to learn. The professor just has to suck it up and keep
teaching for the rest of the class because although he could be losing his time, the students are
wasting time and money.
Although race was not what he was trying to point out as to why when he said the girl
was Cuban, it was definitely not something that he should’ve pointed out. Race in this age and
time are very sensitive topics that can cause a lot of mayhem, so he can end up being “racist” to
Hispanic people. It was an unnecessary comment and whether or not he is racist or not, it is not
something you want to point out when giving an interview or report because people will take that
out of context. Like Gerald Amada said, “What’s relevant to discipline is what the student did”
and the last thing you want to include race or speculate a psychological condition. It could’ve led
him down a pathway that he did not want to go through.
I can completely understand why it can bother a person when he is being paid no
attention to, but I am sure there was at least 1 person in that whole class that was willing to learn.
Walking out of class is unprofessional no matter from where you see it and there is no argument
that can prove otherwise. He has to put his job over his personal beliefs or just not work there
because again, it’s not like the whole class was not willing to learn, it was just one very childish
student. Respect is most definitely a 2-way street, but as a professor with around 400 students a
lecture, you have to expect a few bad eggs in the bunch and have ways to deal with them
specifically. It’s an unreasonable punishment and it is not something that most people would
agree with while looking at it from either side.