How do you feel about professors locking the door?

[Amnesty]

Title has the simple version of this: How do you feel about professors who lock the doors to the lecture hall when they begin teaching and will not allow late students to come in?

Why I ask (the TL;DR version that's just personal stuff and unnecessary ): In my first semester of nursing school, this was a standard policy. I never liked it, but I definitely understood it. Punctuality is a big thing for me, but it isn't for a lot of people these days, and the cohort needed an overarching message that nursing wasn't the profession to get into if you couldn't get it together and arrive on time. None of the other professors we had after that have felt that a locked-door policy was necessary.

That was all good and well, but now I'm on my last semester of nursing school and I have a professor with a personal policy of locking the door when the lecture begins. I disagree with it on principle, because I think it's just childish. We all pay a lot of money for the education we receive. Every moment of it is important to us. We've made it to the final stretch, and I think we've shown the faculty that we're dedicated enough and wouldn't be late without a very good reason. Depriving us of lectures we paid for because that professor refuses to cope with someone quietly coming in and sitting down is kind of ridiculous IMO. But I've always figured, hey, whatever, I'm never late to anything so it won't affect me, and I've shrugged it off.

Well, guess what? It happened. Our class is several hours long, so we get released for 5-10 minute breaks every hour or so. We were released for a 10 minute break at 10 til, and I ended up needing a bit longer in the bathroom than I thought. I got back to the classroom 2 minutes before the 10 minutes was up, and I found myself locked out. I was irate. Ten minutes hadn't even passed yet, and I knew I had to have only missed her shutting the doors by less than a minute. It was unfair and I couldn't do jack squat about it. I couldn't even leave because everything, including my purse, was locked inside the classroom that I was locked out of. It was incredibly upsetting to have to sit outside for an hour knowing I was missing the lecture and being completely powerless to do anything about it.

Now I'm not stupid enough to complain to anybody and make waves about it; you pick your battles wisely, and this one would just be stupid. But I'm definitely still angry that it happened, and I'm going to write about it on that professor's evaluation at the end of the course. It's left me wondering how other students feel about/deal with these kinds of policies, or whether they even have them.

[EwaAnn]

Weird science:

You are one of the people I would not be upset about.but there are others that ruin things for others.Things happen all right

And I have had that experience as well. I try to keep that to a minimum. Keep up the good work:yes:

[rrcole]

We have one student that during all semesters, has been late every single day. The policies clearly state that if the door is closed, it is not to be entered. We are not locked in. Tardiness is disruptive and when it is the same person to each class every day, something must be said. This student has been spoken to multiple times by multiple instructors but still has the same attitude towards being late. I can't understand how he has continually gotten by with his behavior and repeated refusal to follow set rules. We as a cohort -1 are in class usually 10-15 mins prior to class daily.

I wish the doors could be locked, due to the every day disturbance.

[lifeatthebluffs, BSN, RN]

While I don't mind the door-locking policy in theory, I feel like enforcing it could be unfair to good students who arrive late once due to circumstances completely outside their control. Seems to me like a better policy would to enforce this rule to the letter for the first few weeks (but maybe set up a timer during breaks to ensure compliance by instructors and students), and after that relax this policy but keep an eye on students--or call them out as they enter the room (not in a mean way, just ask their name so you can record it to see if this is a habitual problem). Policy could be re-instituted with class-wide warning if relaxation is abused.