Good morning, and welcome to Monday, November 20. Eric Kelderman wrote today’s Briefing, filling in for Rick Seltzer. Julia Piper compiled Comings and Goings. Get in touch: rick.seltzer@chronicle.com.
Student behavior has become a problem. What can the faculty do?
Increasingly, students are making aggressive demands of their professors or acting out in inappropriate ways, our Beth McMurtrie reports. Some lash out — in person or via email — if a faculty member doesn’t help them pass a course, for example, or they disrupt class with inappropriate remarks. Administrators point to several factors driving this boundary-challenging behavior, including a rise in mental-heath problems and a lack of interaction during the pandemic. In addition, they say, national political divides and students’ growing use of social media have given some a warped view of appropriate classroom behavior.
The situation has put many faculty members in a difficult position, Beth found, having to decide whether to endure the troubling behavior or deal with it. Teaching experts and student-affairs administrators are now starting to talk about these challenges. Beth took some time to answer three questions about her reporting for Daily Briefing readers:
What one thing should everyone know about this story?
Professors are uncertain about how they’re supposed to respond to some problematic behaviors they’re seeing in their classrooms, like rude remarks or unreasonable requests to make up missed work. But even less egregious conflicts can make them feel unmoored. This confusion speaks to how the pandemic reshaped social norms, teaching practices, and students’ expectations.
What two things surprised you while you were reporting?
Some students seem to be using the institution’s language of care that came through during the height of the pandemic — “we are caring, we are flexible” — to ask for accommodations that their professors now think are inappropriate. Some professors feel they have no one in their corner if they stick to their course policies on things like deadlines and missed assignments. They fear that colleagues or student-affairs staff might take the side of students, if students complain.
What three questions are you still asking?
How widespread are these student-conduct challenges? What is at the root of these conflicts? Is this a short-term problem as everyone adjusts to post-pandemic life, or has something permanently shifted?
Read more on the changing relationship between faculty and students: “Power Shift.”
