cellular phone usage

No Escape From Ringing - commentary on cellular phone usage - Brief Article

Jolie Gorchov

Tired of seeing (and hearing) people on their cell phones everywhere you go? Get used to it. There's not much anyone can do, except request that folks not use them.

Cell phones have become commonplace -- and not just at restaurants and concerts. Some places that would seem more inappropriate than others -- like college classrooms, libraries, emergency rooms, courtrooms and even chapels and gravesites - are popular places for people to whip out their phones.

Most colleges and universities have strict classroom policies concerning electronic device use. And the UCLA Law School library outlawed cell phones during finals last year because there were so many complaints.

But smaller colleges have a harder time controlling use. "Some of the instructors don't do anything at all about it," said Matt Trujillo, a Santa Monica Community College student. "The cell phones go off all the time -- just last week, I had two classes where people were just talking on the phone, like making plans for later, and no one said anything. I'm just mad though, because my phone doesn't work in those classrooms."

Donna Burroughs was a juror on a trial recently at the criminal courthouse downtown, when the public defender's cell phone went off. "It was weird. It was so out of context, because it was a murder trial and we were looking at photos at the time. It sounded like he was talking to his wife about one of his children," she said. The trial went on without comment, but the defendant lost the case.

Even funeral services are not immune. A spokesman at a major L.A. cemetery who asked to remain anonymous said it's become more common to hear pagers go off during services in chapels, and to see people on cell phones at gravesites during burial services.

"There's no policy. It's not the kind of thing we could try to enforce, but it does happen," he said. "You'll hear pagers go off. If they're in a chapel, people will get up and go outside to use their phone. But at the gravesites, you see people actually talking on the phone. It's really amazing. It's gotten worse within the last few years."

COPYRIGHT 1999 CBJ, L.P.; COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group; http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m5072/is_46_21/ai_57951680