When students register for a course through BU Brain, attend the first day of class and look over the syllabus, they are essentially signing a contract with the professor — to fulfill his or her expectations or suffer the consequences of receiving a bad grade.

But shouldn’t this contract be two-sided? By accepting the responsibility of teaching a class, isn’t the professor also accepting the duty to fulfill his obligations as a teacher?

It doesn’t always seem like it.

There are certain expectations students have that are sometimes lost in translation, or simply ignored. And as students, we don’t have the luxury of stamping a “C” on a professor’s transcript in response to failure — the only tools we have for expressing our displeasure are complaining to the professor himself (generally a waste of time) and leaving a bad review on the Web site Rate My Professors (only slightly more useful). End-of-semester evaluations exist as well, but until the SA is able to make them available to students, they serve little practical purpose.

Take attendance, for example. Blackboard and the class e-mail list make it incredibly easy to contact all students at once and let them know when class is being canceled, yet all too often we end up making the early morning trek to class from off campus, Hillside, etc., only to find a sign on the door saying that class has been canceled. Why not save us the trip with a quick e-mail? The 45 minutes it takes to get to class and then go back home could be spent on homework, or something useful. Or FarmVille, but that’s besides the point.

Let’s also talk about tests and papers. If we do our part and hand our work in on time, isn’t it fair that we get our grades back within a reasonable period of time? Though grades are of course not everything, they remain an extremely important part of college, both for us and the employers we’re applying to. We want to know what these grades are. If nothing else, they allow us to see what we did wrong so we can improve our performance in upcoming assignments.

There are other things, as well. Professors should be prepared for class, and able to give relevant lectures; they should be clear about class requirements and stick to the syllabus as much as possible and they should be available outside of class when they say they will be.

As far as expectations go, these don’t seem to be too extravagant. In fact, given the fact that we are paying a significant amount of money for the privilege of attending these classes, one might say they’re almost a right.