Student Web site for rating faculty riles Williams College

The Boston Globe ^ | 6/3/2002 | By Patrick Healy, Globe Staff,

[gd124]

WILLIAMSTOWN - No one teaching at Williams College is safe from public humiliation these days - not Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Gluck, not veterans of the world-renowned math department, nor the college president himself.

In the last month, the close bond between Williams professors and students - a point of pride at this tiny, elite college in the Berkshires - has been ruptured by a new Web site where students are now anonymously critiquing their professors for classmates to see.

[gd124]

It's quite amusing the way ultra liberal professors can publicly sneer at and ridicule students who disagree with them with impunity, but don't like it when students return the favor at a private website.

[ppaul]

LOL!

[RJCogburn]

I doubt that quality is limited to liberal professors.

[gd124]

Of course not, I just meant that most professors are ultra-liberal. And it is the People Republic of Mass., as well.

[Orual]

''I feel a sense of betrayal, that students saw it necessary to circulate comments publicly about me and everyone else,'' said Olga R. Beaver.

Name Game flag.

[Orual]

No one teaching at Williams College is safe from public humiliation these days - not Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Gluck.

Siren

I became a criminal when I fell in love.
Before that I was a waitress.

I didn't want to go to Chicago with you.
I wanted to marry you, I wanted
Your wife to suffer.

I wanted her life to be like a play
In which all the parts are sad parts.

Does a good person
Think this way? I deserve

Credit for my courage--

I sat in the dark on your front porch.
Everything was clear to me:
If your wife wouldn't let you go
That proved she didn't love you.
If she loved you
Wouldn't she want you to be happy?

I think now
If I felt less I would be
A better person. I was
A good waitress.
I could carry eight drinks.

I used to tell you my dreams.
Last night I saw a woman sitting in a dark bus--
In the dream, she's weeping, the bus she's on
Is moving away. With one hand
She's waving; the other strokes
An egg carton full of babies.

The dream doesn't rescue the maiden

More Yuck Gluck here.

[okiedust]

Too funny. Professors as "victims". Student critiques, "hurt their careers, and their feelings." What a crock, but a very funny one.

regards

[Bonaparte]

When I was in college, student evaluations of professors were available in print, but I never trusted them. Instead, I audited the semester before I anticipated taking these classes. Talking to students as they left class gave me additional insight. I rarely got a dud and when I did, it was unavoidable.

These coddled and pampered professors at Williams are way too thin-skinned.

[sadimgnik]

While Harvard and some other schools share their evaluations with students, Williams keeps the information private. As a result, many Williams students say they need Factrak to learn and share unvarnished opinions about their professors.

Part of the sensitivity over faculty evaluations stems from their impact on professors' careers. In national studies on professors and grade inflation, for example, some faculty say they heed students' demands for higher grades because the students might otherwise punish them on the evaluations. Moreover, these reviews are usually a factor when professors come up for tenure or promotion, apply for leaves of absence, or seek other rewards in academia.

A couple of observations here: one of the universities at which I teach (I am a full-time journalist who teaches, part time, at a couple of local colleges) has two methods of gaining student evaluation.

One is the formal SET/SEU (Student Evaluation of Teaching / Student Evaluation of Unit)

With those, we (staff) conduct the survey BEFORE we allocate grades for the semester ... but do not get back the anonymous responses until AFTER the grades are finalised.

The idea, of course, is that we can't then be influenced by the comments when setting grades ... but it is also fair to say that all teachers want to be liked (or at least respected) by their students and it hurts to get a 'poor' evaluation.

For part-timers like me, it is merely pride that's hurt by such comments (which we use to improve our teaching skill-set) but for those who don't have another income stream, such comments can be devastating.

The other method of feedback is that the Student Guild runs an unofficial poll of students, and prints the results in an edition of the student newspaper (with right-of-reply granted to staff)

The empowers the students (crikey I hate that word), but has less formal impact on a teacher's career ... because, like the website mentioned in the story, it is assumed that some students will be commenting just to show off their ability to zorch their lecturers without having the courage of their convictions.

[Balding_Eagle]

Thank you for posting the entire article. The Globe has already taken down their page.

[the]

To Kohut, Factrak represents what he sees as a troubling trend of ''consumerism'' in higher education:

What they call "consumerism" I call capitalism, and I know that the professors hate capitalism. The link below is to a slate.com article about how colleges charge each student according to his/her needs:

The Socialist Economics of College Tuition

Why elite universities charge $38,000 per year, and why they don't expect you to pay it.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

Thank you for posting the entire article. The Globe has already taken down their page.

Really? I just accessed the page with no difficulty.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

Too funny. Professors as "victims". Student critiques, "hurt their careers, and their feelings." What a crock, but a very funny one.

I'm with you on the "hurt their feelings" angle, but I think that there is a legitimate reason for concern.

An anonymous forum like Factrak does have the potential to unjustly damage the careers of professors, through the dissemination of information or allegations that range from innocent misunderstanding to slander.

Student gets a bad grade, starts a rumor campaign, the electronic equivalent of graffiti vandalism. Where does the professor go to get his/her reputation back?

[okiedust]

Well, thanks for agreeing in part, but I think the scenario you paint is at least in the Williams case not applicable. It sounds like the web site is set up to give unvarnished crtiques to the profs. If a poster decides to "start a rumour campaign," he defeats the purpose of the site, and might be "flamed" by those who know the truth, and could possibly even lose posting privileges. Sound familiar? In fact, Williams being a small and tight community, most of the other students would probably even be able to guess who it was and might even "out" the person. Saying that you can't say true bad things because you might say false bad things, is just another attempt to avoid the hard truth, while hiding behind a false premise. It's just the profs attempts to avoid the real world. I mean forced ranking is a itch too, and you don't have tenure to cushion the hurt, and all you get is two weeks pay, in lieu of notice. Life is full of criticism, and in my view, the profs just don't like the idea of getting their papers back with a bad grade and a long dissertation in red pencil about what jerks they are. JMHO.

regards

[tdadams]

To Kohut, Factrak represents what he sees as a troubling trend of ''consumerism'' in higher education: Students, in return for paying $32,470 for a year at Williams, want professors to entertain them and inflate their grades into A's for average work - or else face unattributed wrath on Factrak.

I think this may be a problem, but I think it's more anecdotal than anything. When I was in college, I never felt my tuition was a quid pro quo agreement that I'd get good grades. My grade depended solely on my own hard work and dedication to learning the subject. I wanted challenging classes.

As a free market libertarian, I think this is probably a positive thing. A lot of these professors are raising a stink because for so long they've been isolated from public criticism of their performance. The truth hurts sometimes, and it takes public criticism, not student evaluations that the professor can throw in the trash, to get better performance.

In my former music career, it always upset me to see a bad review published about a project I was associated with. But I can honestly say that after I put my emotions aside, the critique was usually instructive. Maybe these professors should get off their arrogant high horse and take an honest look at what their students are trying to tell them.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

In my former music career, it always upset me to see a bad review published about a project I was associated with. But I can honestly say that after I put my emotions aside, the critique was usually instructive.

That's fine, since you knew who your critic was (the review had a byline). What would you think if someone anonymously dissed your music on posters attached to telephone poles and bulletin boards around town?

If there is criticism of me that could potentially wreck my career, I am certain that I would want to face my accuser (or at least be able to respond directly to them).

[ReveBM]

I am of two minds about this student website practice. On the one hand, I wholly support the ability of people to peer into the world of faculty and scream "the emperor has no clothes". Also, everyone deserves to learn what they are really paying for at college.

On the other hand, I don't feel that college age students are as mature as they were 100 years ago, because people are not expected to grow up anymore (unless you join the military). I could argue that adolescence now extends into the 30s. This is part of the reason, I believe, for later and later marriages, not just the excuse to build a career first.

My fear is that in the drive by faculty to please the students and give them what they want, courses will continue to be dumbed down to the point that college is mindless drivel, faculty reviews or no faculty reviews. Has this already happened? What these students and faculty both need is a swift kick in the ass, then they need to get back to their books.

[tdadams]

That's fine, since you knew who your critic was (the review had a byline). What would you think if someone anonymously dissed your music on posters attached to telephone poles and bulletin boards around town?

Don't assume that to be the case. One project I worked with got scads of anonymous criticism on the web and the artist was the subject of slanderous (and completely false) anonymous accusations. Whether it hurt his career or not, I can't say, but most people can judge allegations like that for themselves and decide how much credence they want to give to someone who won't make themselves known even when they're saying things that might destroy a person's life.

[the]

"That's what the Internet is for, slandering others anonymously." -- Banky Edwards
(Played by Jason Lee in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back.)

[gd124]

Professor's feel free to criticise and belittle students as they face no potential problems, but if a student criticises a professor and puts his name to it, and the professor is especially petty, he is likely to face severe problems.