At Ferris, there is no pol­icy or hard rule that states how long a stu­dent must wait for a pro­fes­sor if they are late.

“In 20 years, I’ve never been more than a cou­ple of min­utes late for class, and no one has ever left when I wasn’t there right at the begin­ning of the period,” said Associate Professor and President of the Ferris Faculty Association, Jim Rumpf.

Rumpf said he does not have an atten­dance pol­icy any­way, so stu­dents can come and go as they please. When he was in col­lege, he said there was a rule for wait­ing time: five to ten min­utes for an assis­tant pro­fes­sor and fif­teen min­utes for a tenured professor.

Associate Provost Don Flickinger also attested that he does not know of any “offi­cial” uni­ver­sity pol­icy regard­ing the time stu­dents must wait for professors.

“I believe there are a few uni­ver­si­ties that have placed such poli­cies in writ­ing,” said Flickinger.

Flickinger also said that for as long as he can remem­ber dur­ing his 44 years of teach­ing, most uni­ver­si­ties had some kind of “how long do I have to wait” legend.

That leg­end is often pro­pogated by word-of-mouth between students.

As for the dif­fer­ence between adjunct, asso­ciate and tenured pro­fes­sors, Flickinger said the “rank” of the pro­fes­sor did not make a dif­fer­ence when he was tak­ing classes.

“My deci­sion was con­trolled by the penalty for not being there if the pro­fes­sor hap­pened to arrive after I had cho­sen to leave,” said Flickinger.

Dan Burcham, vice pres­i­dent of stu­dent affairs, also said he knows of no rule like this.

Some stu­dents feel that if a pro­fes­sor is late, they have the right to leave class.

“Well, that had hap­pened to me this semes­ter and I left,” said Calvin Dorvilier, a fresh­man in adver­tis­ing. “Students are in col­lege to learn about real life; if a pro­fes­sor is late to a class, what makes him/her qual­i­fied to teach us about real life?” n