Surprise, surprise, it's not Caitlyn and Greg!  I need a break from them for a few days--but look for more on Sunday. ;-)  For now, more from "Confessions of a Grad School Drop-Out"

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For Whom the Cell Tolls



    Many twenty-somethings today, myself included, vividly remember the television show “Saved By the Bell” and its hero, Zach Morris.  Zach was the coolest kid in school and the biggest troublemaker.  He always dated the cutest girl around and ended up married to head cheerleader Kelly Kapowski in a prime time network special.  Zach had a knack for skirting around serious trouble and always kept Mr. Belding, the principal, on his toes.  Even when he got caught making mischief, he somehow came out on top and was always the hero of the day and the lead in the school play.

    But that wasn’t all that made Zach cool—Zach Morris had a cell phone, back in 1991, when such things were only for the rich and famous.  He had to hide it from Mr. Belding, and it was confiscated frequently, but he still had that brick-sized apparatus.  That phone was the symbol that he was, indeed, the coolest person around.  After all, no one else had one,

    Maybe it’s that desire for coolness that leads my fellow Generation Y members to live with cell phones attached to their ears at all times.  Maybe they want to be like Zach and end up married to a cheerleader in the California sun, running around with Slater and Screech.  I surely can’t come up with a more logical explanation.

    Don’t get me wrong—I’m not a technophobe or a crusader for a cell-phone-free society.  I’ve had a cell phone of my own since 1999—one of the first students at Lake Superior State University to have one.  My parents bought it for me the day I left for my second year of college—my first with a car.  Something about that little piece of plastic and metal made them feel better about their 19-year-old driving 400 miles on her own.

     My cell phone is nearly always in my purse, pocket, or cup holder, and I use it daily—in fact, it’s my primary mode of communication.  I enjoy downloading ring tones and wallpapers as much as anyone—my phone currently features a background image of Alan Rickman as Severus Snape in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and a ring tone of the Knights of Ni from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  I’ve even worked for a cellular phone company in customer support and heard some of the crazy stories of how people’s lives revolve around their phones to the point that they’ve racked up bills totaling several thousand dollars—or how they need to add a sixth line to their account so their ten-year-old can have his very own phone.

But never has my phone interrupted a class in nearly seven years of usage.  I simply shut the phone off when I enter the classroom.  I don’t even use the trendy silent mode—I can still hear phones on vibrate, and quite frankly, I’m not going to answer it during class even if it does ring, so why bother?  I have no children or terminally ill parents—my friends’ dinner plans can wait another 45 minutes.

Why can’t my peers understand this concept?  At least once a week, I hear phones ring during class—and this is in graduate school.  During my undergrad years, cell phones were becoming more popular and the phone disturbances were even more frequent. Professors threatened to confiscate the offensive gadgets as people entered the classroom, and the university’s student government nearly caused a mutiny when they attempted to institute a cell phone check box at the door for their weekly meetings due to the frequency of the interruptions.

That the cell phone check was never enforced demonstrates another big issue with cell phones—all the anti-cell-phone rules in the world don’t help when they aren’t enforced.  I’ve seen a number of course syllabi make all sorts of threats as to what will happen to those whose electronic leashes disturb class, but I have yet to see a professor follow through with anything beyond a dirty look.  I’ve seen a student have her phone ring three times in a two-hour class without the professor seemingly even noticing.  I know I’m not the only one this bothers—after such a performance, there are usually huddles outside classrooms and buildings, grumbling and wondering what will top the act in the semester to come.

The worst example I’ve seen of a cell phone disrupting a class, though, was during my time as a teaching assistant in Ohio.  I was in the middle of delivering a lecture when a cell phone went off in the third row.  Normally, I try not to even acknowledge the disturbance—the student normally puts the phone on silent and class goes on.  However, by the third repetition of the chorus to Eminem’s latest misogynistic diatribe, it was obvious the student was oblivious.  I stopped in mid-sentence and stared hard at the offender—a young woman named Denise who had been in my developmental composition class the semester before.  She was finally learning to write coherently, but seemed to have her head in the clouds at times.  “Oh, right,” she said, reaching for the phone, which had completed its performance by then.  I shook my head and continued with class.

Five minutes later:  “I’m your biggest fan/This is Stan.”  Denise’s phone again.  I raised my voice and continued, certain she would figure out the appropriate course of action.  The ringer began a second time and my exasperation mounted.

“Hello?”  My ears picked up the beginning of a conversation.  No, I thought.  I’m hearing things.  She did not just answer that phone in my classroom.

She had. “Yeah.  I’m kind of busy right now (giggle).  No, no, it’s okay—I’ve got a minute.”

Okay, that does it.  Once again, I paused in mid-sentence, this time slamming closed my book with a resounding thud.  I felt more eyes than usual on me—the girls passing notes in the back row even looked up for this one.  My students had rarely seen any sort of display of temper from me—the most animation they had gotten from me so far was the day I had taught while hopped up on Darvocet two days after surgery.  Something told them, though, that this would be worth watching.

I didn’t disappoint.  I made my way to the third row, took the phone from Denise’s hand, and cleared my throat.  “Hi, this is Denise’s English teacher.  She’s in class right now.  She’ll call you back later if she ever finishes the extra homework she’ll have tonight.”  Snapping the clamshell phone closed, I made my way back to the front of classroom and continued with our discussion of Margaret Atwood’s “A View from Canada.”  My students were strangely quiet.   

When I trusted myself not to laugh, I looked up from my notes.  Several students were looking at me in shock.  Denise looked thunderstruck and ready to argue, but I gave her that look over my glasses and she thought better of the idea.  The discussion became unusually lively for a 10 a.m. English 101 class—there were more than four participants for the rest of the hour.

The appointed time finally arrived, and I dismissed the class.  Denise slowly made her way forward.  “Ms. Warren, can I have my phone back now?” she asked around a wad of gum.  I held the offending object out to her.

“If it ever rings in this class again, we’ll be in Dr. Salvner’s office.”  Knowing my department chair had as dim a view of cell phones in the classroom as I did, I was comfortable making such a threat.  He also loathed students who harassed grad assistants, so I knew I would come out on top.  However, I was confident it wouldn’t come to that. She reached for the phone, but I maintained my grip.  “I want four pages on proper classroom etiquette by Friday.  And I want sources.  I’m not going to worry much about format for them, but I want to know where your information is coming from.” 

She was properly horrified. This was Monday, but the class had another essay due Wednesday, and her grade was already suspect.  My syllabus clearly outlined that any student receiving extra homework as a penalty would lose a full letter grade off their semester score if they failed to complete the additional assignment, and Denise was tenuously hanging onto the C she needed to avoid repeating the class.  “What if I don’t have time?”

“Then you’ll make time.  I suggest you start by turning the phone off.”

“But Ms. Warren . . .”

“No buts.  You take up my time, I’ll be sure to take up yours.”

There was no one else in the classroom for this discussion, but a number of her fellow students found out. It had the desired effect—not another cell phone rang in my classroom for the rest of the semester.