Odd classroom behavior...

I've seen some odd classroom behavior this year among students, esp. freshpersons in my classes:

- 2 (female) students going up to a (female) prof w/designer clothing and loudly complimenting her on it after class.

- In class, 2 (female) students mentioning unpaid internships and study abroad trips - that they took in high school!

- In section, students not bringing the requested 7 hard copies of the handouts that they had prepared, instead assuming everyone would have a laptop or an iPhone on which to read it.

And this is above and beyond the bourgeois culinary aesthetism of the restaurant reviews in the campus newspaper!

The other week I gently brought up how cumulatively these could make students w/o $ feel like they didn't belong, 1st getting into how respect for persons who are different underpins a vital academic community, and then segueing into how they might feel uncomfortable and how expecting iPhones/laptops puts a price of $260-700 a year on simple academic participation w/peers.

I also gently suggested to be very conscious of how actions including comments could affect people, and that if someone were to bring up travel experiences since they were germane, for example, to preface them with something simple like, "I had the good fortune to travel to..."

I wonder what the students think of that.

Afterwards, I segued into the ethics of discussing sex in class, esp. focusing on the Northwestern University fucksaw incident as a story with which to tease apart delicate issues of what's appropriate in the classroom and why.

"Why do we need a thought experiment when we have real life," I told the kids.