Ferris Fact or Fiction

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