Unwritten “15 Minute Rule” Questioned

Earlier this month, a group of students decided to leave class after their teacher failed to show 15 minutes into the format. The students claimed they were following an unwritten rule that allows students to leave class after fifteen minutes with no sign of their instructor. This story, however, had a twist—the students had been informed by another instructor to wait in the class and, because they left class anyway, were reprimanded for their actions. While uncommon, the incident brought the “underground rule” to light for many students and faculty.

Although the student population believes the “15-minute rule” is official, Dean of Residential Life AJ Cosgrove said that it is undocumented.

“Certainly there’s an amount of common sense that students use. After fifteen minutes without an instructor, the practice is, if they haven’t heard anything from the teacher, they leave the class,” Cosgrove said. “[However,] there is no place where we have a formal explanation of what the fifteen minute rule is. In other words, it does not exist.”

English Department Chair and instructor Lundy Smith said that although  it is comprehensible why students would leave the classroom after fifteen minutes, he felt that all students should make an effort to contact their teachers or other faculty members before leaving.

“If I were a student showing up for a classroom and I waited for fifteen or twenty minutes and the teacher never showed up, I would understand that the class was probably not going to happen that day,” Smith said. “But what I would like kids to do rather than assuming they are free to go is to ask another adult.”

Cosgrove agreed and said that reaching out for adults is crucial. “I think in this day and age, the reasonable thing to do would be to attempt to give the teacher a phone call, because most teachers give students their cell phone numbers, or send them an email and wait a few minutes,” he said.

Along with contacting the teacher, Director of Studies and mathematics instructor Laura Marshall said that students have obligations and expectations they need to meet. She took math classes as an example.

“I would expect my students to go in and start working on problems and putting them on the board,” Marshall said. “Class time is valuable, even when the teacher is not there. It’s a great opportunity for students to ask questions of each other and help each other out with problems.”

Although faculty members agreed that students should not leave their classes without notifying a faculty member or an adult, many students saw the “fifteen minute rule” as fair.

“It's a touchy thing, because if I were a perfect student I would probably say 'it's never justifiable to leave class unless your teacher tells you to,’ but in all honesty, I think it's reasonable,” lower Tess Drauschak said. “Students are not allowed to be 15 minutes late, why should teachers?”

Senior Sam Blank also agreed that the absence of a rule contradicts the fact that teachers can implement consequences on students’ tardiness. “We're held to a standard of punctuality, so teachers definitely should be, too. Teachers don't want us wasting their time, they shouldn't waste ours,” Blank said.

Senior Nick du Pont added that the mutual agreement of meeting class time needs to be kept by both students and faculty for the Academy to have a stronger academic environment.

“Nobody would complain if a teacher dicked a student for being 15 minutes late to class. Therefore, nobody should complain if a student leaves a class after the teacher is absent for 15 minutes,” DuPont said. “If we want our institution to be great, we must hold our teachers to at least the same, if not higher standards than we hold our students.”

Some students said that if the “15 minute rule” is not a legitimate rule, then the Academy should document it in the E Book and approve it as an actual rule.

“The Academy should include the ‘15 minute rule’ into the E Book, because time is valuable in Exeter. You could be spending that waiting time to do homework, eat and catch up on sleep,” lower Derrick Spencer said. “Honestly, anything would be more productive than sitting in a classroom waiting for a teacher to come, doing nothing.

In light of students calling for the inclusion of the “15 minute rule” into the E Book, Marshall said that the anomaly of teachers being late is the reason why the legitimization of the rule is unnecessary. “It happens so rarely that that is why there has never been a need for a rule,” she said.

Faculty members also addressed the fact that students should understand the occasional moments in which teachers are late to class. Smith said that teachers are understanding of individual students’ situations when they’re late, so students should be as well.

“We don’t cancel a class when a kid doesn’t show up. When a kid comes in and says ‘Sorry, I was late, I was doing blank,’ I think there are a lot of give and take for teachers and I would like the kids to feel the same way with the teachers,” Smith said.

He felt that faculty tardiness was sometimes excusable, given the familial circumstances that may arise. “Kids have to remember that because we wear so many hats here, people sometimes get caught up in another situation that they can’t easily extract themselves from. I have had advisees that had to go to the hospital,” Smith said. “There have been colleagues here who have a sick child and they are just having to deal with that or pick their kids up from school and they are racing to get back and they are late.” 

Smith emphasized that no faculty members want to lose class time. He said that it’s inevitable for faculty members to be late sometimes, and that students should understand that teachers never intend it.

 “I don’t think teachers willingly want to lose classes,” Smith said. “We think of our class time as a sacred and precious thing that we don’t want to waste.”