In an essay featured in "Inside Higher Ed," Dever and Justice (2020) called for university faculty to utilize empathy when teaching uncertain, frightened students during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors offered specific strategies for doing so, suggesting that "strict deadlines aren't going to cut it." Many students are confronting issues outside the classroom that affect their ability to learn and succeed, including, but not limited to, health issues, Internet access problems, job stressors, and/or caregiving responsibilities. In turn, as faculty, the idea of being less "strict" and more "flexible" during the pandemic seems to be widely encouraged and practiced. The idea of strictness has long been used by students and instructors within the classroom lexicon (e.g., Poplin et al., 2011), even before pandemic pedagogy. Yet, the fields of instructional communication and education seem void of a coherent conceptualization of this ever-present term (Kendall & Schussler, 2012). If educators continue to alter or abolish course policies and procedures in response to the rapid transition to online learning or the impending health crisis, more needs to be understood about the role of strictness in the instructional process.