My introduction to my "assigned" undergrad faculty advisor (freshman year) was him sitting down the 6 students that were his, explaining to us what tenure was*, and then telling us never to contact him and to talk to his grad student instead.

Somehow, I imagine he didn't treat his grad students much better.

At the end of the day, individual faculty members and department standards make a huge difference.

Mostly because faculty is too busy trying to make tenure or climb the political pole to dean to audit their colleagues.

* I have family in academia, so started to grok where this was going at this point.