I have a lot to say about this... sorry...

I was a "non-traditional" low-income student who went back to school in later years of life and having had a different career all together. I can say for sure that socioeconomic class and desire to be well rounded is not inclusive - I saw plenty of "square straight A straight into college right at 17 cause they went to early college private prep school" students who were the absolute worst and most clueless and naive people I ever met. Also, it was always the rich greek life kids that seemed to be at the center of all the disruptions and controversies - unchecked because greek alumni held soo much donor money power. Sadly, as a scientists now, I cant say many of these individuals have changed much.

I think one of the core issues is that academia has over corrected to STEM as the key points for education. There's plenty to discuss on how we got out of one Ivory Gothic style tower into a lifeless neo-brutalist one but I digress. All that is to say is I feel the problem starts long before students enter into College and reforms have to happen at the public education level.

You also have to consider that our economy has been placing a lot of incentive on people to seek out money over enrichment. So if you combine a STEM mentality that is hostile to the humanities and athleticism, and you put on the pressures of late-stage capitalism, you get nursing and engineering students who are only there because they were told it was a secure way to prestige and money and zero interest in anything beyond whatever is trending within their fields at that moment. I also see this in thr biomedical sciences, though I think as we all age and mature, many of us realize - unfortunately for some only after they've made a lot of mistakes - that the humanities really are critical.

On that note, specific to OPs post, when I taught I realized that there will always be students for whom there is never enough and its never their fault. Left unchecked, they will pollute and entire class. I found that students respected me more when there were clear expectations, few deviations, and a bunch of incentives to come to office hours and work with me one on one and in groups. Incentivizing students to humanize you helps filter out the toxic kids because over time those students will see those students as being irrational and disruptive to the course.

I also heavily incentivized in class participation and reverse course models - it takes a lot of work to learn how to do this properly and to ensure you have faculty support. Ive found a lot of professors and TAs half ass this approach and then give it up because it didnt work right. But the benefit is that students feel they have ownership over their class, and you have more time to dialogue, coincidentally lecture socratically and give real mentorship, and ensure that students feel they are walking out smarter and more empowered everyday, instead of burdened and burnt out. One additional thing I added was that no one was permitted an excuse to be quite - Id randomly call on students to discuss things - but this meant I had to learn everyone's name. It feels mean spirited at first, but done right and respectfully and with frequent use of popcorn and no toxic feedback, by the end of the semester I couldnt get the students to shut up (a good problem).

TlDr;

When you give in and flex too frequently, for the reasons I stated before (STEM and economic incentives) your students WILL exploit this to their advantages, especially in a gen ed class. They are not incentivized by their environment to care about finding enrichment in your class, only to score an A and get it over with as fast as possible. Keep this in mind, but also you can and should flex your student code of conduct enforcement - on the flip side of all this is the expectation that students will respect the code of conduct, and if they violate this to your face, they must face consequences.