Cell phone text messaging has rendered note-passing obsolete and expanded social contact well beyond the four walls of the classroom.

Modern devices, mainly cell phones but also laptop computers and other hand-held gadgets like Blackberries, enhance the age-old practice of not paying attention during class and are becoming quite common, according to some students.

According to a recent survey posted on News.com, and conducted by Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., Professor James Katz and MIT Professor Jing Wang found 45 percent of Rutgers students think text messaging, or texting, is acceptable while in class.

Beau Duvall, Sac State junior, is a student who often sends text messages in class. Duvall said he sends text messages-a couple times a week, usually to set plans with friends after class.

Duvall, who is annoyed in class by ringing cell phones, has no complaints about texting and he doesn’t think that his professors do either.

“They have to see people playing with their phone, but they don’t seem to mind as long as there’s no noise,” Duvall said.

Rico Tabaranza, a junior studying criminal justice, is an occasional in-class text messager who gets the opposite impression from professors.

Tabaranza said that most, if not all of his professors discourage texting in class, which doesn’t always keep him from sending greetings or making plans for that night.

“If they catch you, they try to embarrass you,” Tabaranza said of his professors. “They’ll talk about how you pay for class, and texting isn’t getting your money’s worth.”

Ian Tandingan, a sophomore biology major who doesn’t send or receive text messages during class, hasn’t heard of anyone being called out for doing so, even though his friends are regular text messagers.

Tandingan said sometimes he sends a message to a friend and finds out that he’s in class, but the conversation continues anyway.

“Professors haven’t voiced a strong opposition; they prefer you not to do it but I haven’t seen a policy in a syllabus,” Tandingan said.

Communication Studies part-time instructor Steve Maviglio has voiced his disdain for texting in class.

“I laid down the law in the first class ?” no cell phones, no text messaging and laptops only for taking notes,” Maviglio said in an e-mail.

So far, there hasn’t been a single texting incident, but Maviglio did have to violate his own rule once, he said.

Maviglio, who works full-time as Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez’s chief of staff and deals with the media, said he used his Blackberry during-class-to respond to a journalist, and turned it into a learning experience for his political communication students.

“I used the call as a case study about a breaking news story and how I interact with the media,” said Maviglio, who worked as spokesman for former Gov. Gray Davis.

Senior accounting major Robert Domingo said text messaging bothers him when he’s in class.”I know it shouldn’t, but it catches my attention; and it really distracts me when people shop on their laptop in class,” Domingo said.

Domingo added that the text messagers usually are the same two or three people in class, and that he hasn’t seen many confrontations with professors.

“I don’t know if instructors are oblivious to texting or if they just ignore it,” Domingo said. “Although, (students) are pretty good at hiding it.”

Freshman pre-criminal justice student Casey Raffaelli said he and his friends text message about “any random thing” during class and that he hasn’t noticed it bothering his professors.

“None of them have said anything to me,” Raffaelli said.

Norm Erickson can be reached at [email protected]