Reply #7: I've thrown students out of my classes for being disrespectful. [View All]

College is not high school, and you are not required to be there. You're there because you WANT to be, and you're expected to act like it. Most college instructors and faculty, including myself, pretty much take a zero tolerance policy toward verbal abuse. We're not your parents, who are required by common morality to put up with your crap, and we're not your high school teachers, who were required by law to coddle you through your adolescent temper tantrums. College is a place for adults, and all discourse in the classroom should be respectful. Curse at me and you're done. As I told the last student I chucked from class, "You're free to come back when you grow up a little."

This teacher probably overreacted a bit if the one curse was truly the whole story, but many years in a college classroom tells me that there's probably more here than the student is admitting to (or, possibly, aware of). Nobody works at a college without overhearing at least a few curses an hour in general conversation, and this teacher would be tossing students left and right if that's all it took to get onto her bad side. Because she didn't, I'd guess that there was something to his demeanor or actions, or perhaps memories of earlier interactions with him, that set her off.