I have been resisting the urge to "throw in" since the piece of
information I have seemed only to be of marginal relevance (albeit
interesting).

I am a certified USTA Official (U.S. Tennis Association). When in this
role, my job is to enforce USTA rules at sanctioned tournaments. This,
of course, often requires sudden and decisive intervention into an
ongoing tennis match (of frequently very competitive people in the
middle of a highly stressful situation). Obviously clarity and
consistency of rule interpretation and enforcement is nearly as great as
that required in the middle of a classroom of college adults,
near-adults, and otherwise.

As an interesting social phenomena observation, this was such a problem
at tennis matches, the USTA inserted a new rule SPECIFIC to cell phones
and pagers. In essence it uses the existing USTA rules: An inadvertent
"hindrance" that requires replay of the point, followed by a
"code-conduct violation" giving the point to the player's opponent the
second time, a game the third time, and default of the match the fourth
time. It does stipulate that if it is posted that cell phones should be
turned off or put on silent mode at the tournament site, it goes
directly to the conduct violation point penalty system. A player can
even be subject to this if the guilty party is a relative, friend,
coach, etc. in the stands (and if not, the spectator can be warned, then
expelled). 

This has been extremely effective in my experience so far. 

My point is this, if there is a clearly stated rule, then the student
can't complain (or even claim ignorance) and the response is a
consistent one, not subject to different instructors' different
responses (thereby giving a student more grounds for complaint if the
instructor happens to be on the anti-technology infringement end of the
spectrum than previous instructors).

Not a suggestion, just a point of observation and contribution to the
dialogue.

ED

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