Surely you’ve seen this one already. On Tuesday, November 16, Cornell University’s Mark Talbert yelled at a student for yawning during a class Talbert was teaching. According to the write-up in Inside Higher Education:
He asks that the person who made the noise, which he later identifies as loud yawning, apologize, and asks other students to report on who made the noise. A student suggests that someone in the back of the room made the noise, but Talbert is dubious. He tells the students that “my bad side is as bad as my pleasant side is pleasant,” that he is sick of “overly loud yawns” and that if someone needs to make such a yawn, he or she should “get up and walk the hell out. Yawn outside.”
Now, granted, the yawn appears to be intentionally rude, but one wonders why Talbert couldn’t just teach on through and continue his (no doubt thrilling) Tuesday, Thursday lecture class in Business Computing, you know, like an adult.
Students apparently fought back. Constance Boozer at Ivy Gate writes that Cornell students were going to yawn again in his course yesterday, this time on purpose.
As she explains:
For all of those students attending Professor Talbert’s Business Computing lecture tomorrow, make sure to have your cell phones charged. According to Facebook, the very group that witnessed him “wigging out at a phantom yawner” is planning a “Yawn In” from 11:40 a.m. to 12:55p.m.
That’s a long yawn.
