BRUNSWICK, Ga. – Politeness is actually rude to Professor Leon Gardner.

The assistant chemistry professor at the College of Coastal Georgia told his students saying “bless you” is actually quite impolite and students caught saying could receive a lower grade.

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“We are taught that it is polite to say ‘bless you’ when someone sneezes. However, if you say this while I am talking, it is NOT polite, it is very rude,” Gardner’s syllabus reads.

Campus Reform reports:

Gardner promises a grade reduction of up to 15 percent of the final grade to any student who disrupts his class.

In the syllabus, he explicitly states that saying “bless you,” interrupting him for handouts that were available prior to class time, and sharpening a pencil are the worst disruptive offenses and could warrant an immediate one percent reduction from the students’ final grades.

The professor warns, “Especially egregious behavior could result in expulsion from the class, withdrawal from the course, and disciplinary action from the college,” according to the syllabus.

Campus Reform contacted Gardner to obtain comment. He hung up.

The professor isn’t the only one who thinks saying “bless you” is rude.

A Tennessee high school senior was recently suspended when she said “bless you” after a classmate sneezed.

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“She said that we’re not going to have godly speaking in her class and that’s when I said we have a constitutional right,” the student, Kendra Turner, said of her teacher, according to WMC Action News 5.

“There were several students that were talking about this particular faculty member there that was very demeaning to them in regard to their faith,” Turner’s youth pastor, Becky Winegardner told the news station.

In that case, Assistant Principal Lynn Garner said he could not “discuss the specifics of what happened,” only saying there are “two sides to every story,” according to The Tennessean.

The news site reports Garner believes the situation was blown out of proportion “on social media.”