University violates its pledge of confidentiality over a homophobic remark. Thoughts?

Great Debates
81

[QUOTE=FinnAgain]
The entire situation is absurd and deplorable. Is being a bigoted asshole the act of, well, an asshole? Sure. But on! In an evaluation that was not just anonymous, but that had no real impact on anything and would’ve been totally private to boot, what the heck does it matter? When a teacher, the guy who is the actual source of authority in the power relationship, feels “harassed” because one of his students is a jerk, in private, to no effect? A “whinging in the third degree” flag should definitely be thrown on the field. That the professor then deliberately violated the school’s anonymity policy in order to attain some measure of vengeance for his hurt feelings is abhorrent.

Some professors seem not to understand some of the more ‘nuanced’ differences between a university and a re-education camp. Universities are already a bubble of un-reality, we don’t need to compound matters by teaching students that they have some innate right to avoid being offended.

The student involved was a total asshole. But to pretend that there were actual threats involved is beyond Orwellian.
[/quote]

I totally agree.

82

[QUOTE=silenus]
The students are exactly the people to be evaluating them. Because they are, you know, the paying customer. If my tuition is paying some morons salary, it is entirely within my rights and responsibilities to make sure that Administration knows the person is incompetent, and if enough students bitch, to can the boob. I’m the one paying the money. “He who pays the piper” and all that.
[/QUOTE]

The student is not in a position to be able to comprehend what is or is not a competent performance by an instructor just like a heart patient has no ability to comprehend heart surgery. Just because you’re paying for something doesn’t mean you’re qualified to evaluate it.
Aside from their ignorance, students are also heavily biased and their evaluations tend to be highly self-serving.

83

[QUOTE=Zoe]
Diogenes the Cynic, what is this nonsense about students learning from teachers they hate? I can accept that students can learn from teachers they fear. The best professor that I ever had did not allow me to breathe for the first two weeks in his classroom, but I didn’t stop trembling until near the end of the third quarter. That was forty-six years ago and I still keep up with him.

But it is rare that a student learns much from a teacher she or he hates. If the student is learning, any resentment toward the professor tends to go away. I haven’t run across any exceptions in my career though I will leave the door open for an exception or two.
[/QUOTE]

I said before I was being a little hyperbolic. Let me rephrase it to say that a prof who never makes any students unhappy is not doing her job.

84

Hmmm, let’s see . . . privacy invaded, policy violated by the administration to publicly humiliate a student the professor and administration have a problem with . . . If anyone’s being harassed here, it’s the student. Yes, he’s a royal dipshit and a homophobe, but how does this enter into it? It’s not like you’re allowed to harass your female coworker, just because she’s bitchy to everyone and keeps asking you to do her work.

85

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
I said before I was being a little hyperbolic. Let me rephrase it to say that a prof who never makes any students unhappy is not doing her job.
[/QUOTE]

:dubious:

That’s not hyperbole, Dio. That’s backpedalling and saying something totally different than what you said before.

86

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
I said before I was being a little hyperbolic. Let me rephrase it to say that a prof who never makes any students unhappy is not doing her job.
[/QUOTE]

Now that I agree with.

But students are the only ones who can evaluate a teacher. They are the ones who are getting the education. If they fail to get it, and a number of them have the same complaint about the teacher and the methods used, then the teacher should be corrected or canned. Who else is going to do the evaluation? Admin? They’ve been away from the classroom too long, and would have to watch all the time. Can’t be the Admin. The faculty? Same problem with the “other things that must be done, can’t observe all the time.” Who are the only people who are with the teacher all the time he is teaching? The students. Believe it or not, a large number of them value their education and want to make the most of it. An incompetent teacher is a threat to that education. So is one who is so abrasive, or unintelligible, or weird that learning is hampered. These people need to be dealt with.

Baby them? Not in the least. I have a rep as being a real hard-ass at my school. But I also teach. Even the students who hate my guts acknowledge that they got an education on the subject from me.

So who does the evaluation?

87

[QUOTE=FinnAgain]
The entire situation is absurd and deplorable. Is being a bigoted asshole the act of, well, an asshole? Sure. But on! In an evaluation that was not just anonymous, but that had no real impact on anything and would’ve been totally private to boot, what the heck does it matter? When a teacher, the guy who is the actual source of authority in the power relationship, feels “harassed” because one of his students is a jerk, in private, to no effect? A “whinging in the third degree” flag should definitely be thrown on the field. That the professor then deliberately violated the school’s anonymity policy in order to attain some measure of vengeance for his hurt feelings is abhorrent.

[/QUOTE]

No company would stand for any of their employees telling another that they “hope he chokes on a dick, gets AIDS and dies”. It’s completely inappropriate and inexcusable. No person should have to work under that level of harassment.

As I said before, the anonymity is granted in order to provide honest feedback for the professor’s performance. It’s not a vehicle to anonymous harass and attack the professor.

88

[QUOTE=brazil84]
I don’t know if this question is addressed to me. One man’s hate speech is another man’s . . . not hate speech.
[/QUOTE]

Sorry to be unclear. I meant to address tomndeb. I was wondering when “name-calling” became “hate speech”.

89

[QUOTE=Linty Fresh]
:dubious:

That’s not hyperbole, Dio. That’s backpedalling and saying something totally different than what you said before.
[/QUOTE]

No, it’s having to explain the obvious to people who are incapable of understanding hyperbolic speech.

90

Are there many companies that would “stand for” employees showing up every day, hung over, wearing shorts and sandals? Should that be actionable behavior in colleges too? The rush to false analogy fallacies is wonky. Students aren’t soldiers. Classrooms aren’t corporations.
Employees within a company are not analogous to a student writing an anonymous comment to a professor. Nor is referencing the often batshit nuts system of “workplace harassment” grounds for claiming that a rather powerless student was somehow doing anything more than being a jerk.

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
The student is not in a position to be able to comprehend what is or is not a competent performance by an instructor just like a heart patient has no ability to comprehend heart surgery.
[/quote]

You’ve repeatedly dodged the question as to why in heck a student wouldn’t be qualified to note that a professor taught factually incorrect things, or didn’t return papers in a timely fashion, or lost things that were handed to him with regularity.
As if medical patients aren’t qualified to note whether or not their doctor had a good bedside manner, explained things thoroughly or if they’re upset that their heart surgeon accidentally left a sponge inside their chest after surgery.

Simply repeating the same baseless claims won’t make them true, even if you think them really, really hard.

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]

Just because you’re paying for something doesn’t mean you’re qualified to evaluate it.
[/quote]

You have been making numerous incorrect and unsupported claims about pedagogy and universities in general. Are your qualifications any better than those college students?
It’s worth noting that you are disagreeing with at least two teachers and a professor, (or possibly three teachers) in this thread. How much training in curriculum & instruction, best practices, critical pedagogy, etc… do you have? Are you any more qualified to disagree with a trained teacher than your hypothetical wild and crazy college students?
Why or why not?

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]

Aside from their ignorance, students are also heavily biased and their evaluations tend to be highly self-serving.
[/QUOTE]

Well, so far you’ve displayed ignorance about pedagogy, a bias towards believing something without even attempting to back it up with facts or logic and a worldview that apparently serves some sort of ideological prejudice you have, rather than any attempt to fight ignorance or analyze reality.
Again, if uneducated, ignorant and biased students don’t have a right to criticize teachers, why do you?

Especially since some professors have degrees in their chosen fields, but not in education. That means that, on the level of pedagogical training, college students are, generally, equal to their professors. They might even know more about pedagogy than their teachers if they’re n an education program.
Want to wager as to whether or not your training compares to the years of training that the teachers in this thread have, any better than an average college student’s compares to his/her professor?

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]

No, it’s having to explain the obvious to people who are incapable of understanding hyperbolic speech.
[/quote]

Ahhhh yes, you overstate your claim via pure bombast, and people should tease “a prof who never makes any students unhappy is not doing her job.” out of “An instructor who never inspires hatred or fear is not doing his job right.”

It’s not your fault for writing hyperbolic, bombastic nonsense that didn’t yield a clear interpretation, it’s other people’s for not knowing how absurd you meant to be on purpose. It must be such a drag having to explain such “obvious” stuff to people. Why, the situation is positivity risible.

91

[QUOTE=FinnAgain]
Are there many companies that would “stand for” employees showing up every day, hung over, wearing shorts and sandals? Should that be actionable behavior in colleges too? The rush to false analogy fallacies is wonky. Students aren’t soldiers. Classrooms aren’t corporations.
[/QUOTE]

Fine, let me amend my example then. No company is going to stand for a customer telling one of their employees that they “hope he chokes on a dick, gets AIDS and dies”.

You don’t seriously think that the university should let comments like this go without discipline, do you?

92

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
No, it’s having to explain the obvious to people who are incapable of understanding hyperbolic speech.
[/QUOTE]

That’s not going to work on me, pal. Save your little jedi mind-tricks for the people who went to the same fucked-up college you did. I paid attention in rhetoric class, our philosophy prof wasn’t a wimp, and you are backpedalling like Lance Armstrong trying to keep from going off a cliff.

You compared college students to basic training recruits (Four year basic training–Yeah, that’s a good idea). You said that they were fundamentally unqualified to evaluate or even question their professors, no matter how bad it got. You suggested “whining” as a viable alternative, as if any college student stuck with a lazy shitbird for a prof was a jerk-off for complaining about it. Then you blame us for not figuring out you were kidding.

Can’t you just admit you don’t know what you’re talking about? Is it that hard? I promise, you’ll feel better for having come clean. OK, maybe “promise” is hyperbole, but ya’ know . . .

93

That’s a really poor analogy. By the time students are in college, they’ve taken man different classes, from many types of teachers, with many different teaching styles, with many sessions of each class. And they’re (mostly) conscious during class. There’s really no comparing the two.

94

As a high school teacher and occasional college professor, let me say that I fully support Dio’s drive-them-like-slaves mentality.

If only…

However, I will say that as the recipient of anonymous evaluations I find them very beneficial. Sometimes I could get my feelings hurt, I guess, if I cared about the opinion of a 19 year old stoner on my wardrobe, but not only is there some valuable criticism (lecture too fast, didn’t explain this assignment clearly – which I wish the students would say at the time, not at the end of the year, you know?), but I also get some flattering comments, about certain things, and I never turn that down. It truly does help me in the following semester.

95

I’m not critiquing any profs. As I said upthread, I declined to ever critique an instructor. I always turned in a blank form.

96

[QUOTE=ArizonaTeach]
It truly does help me in the following semester.
[/QUOTE]

No kidding. I’m always tweaking things a bit as a result of student feedback. The kids know what works. Listening to them is a no-brainer.

97

Actually, a heart patient is quite capable of comprehending heart surgery, if the doctor doing the explaining is competent. The patient may not understand all the specifics, such as what anesthesia is used and why, but they certainly can understand what the surgeon is going to do and why.

Likewise, students may not be able to accurately assess specifics about the “meat” of the course, but they CAN assess the professor’s performance in relating that material to them. Their reviews need to be taken with a grain of salt on an individual level, but as a collection can be fairly useful in telling a department or professor what may need changed the next go around.

Having just gone through and (almost) completed 9 years of college, both undergrad and post-graduate, I know that I learned better when a professor treated me with dignity than I did when they acted like we were idiots they were forced to teach in the middle of their precious research projects.

98

You have disagreed with the pedagogical insights of a few teachers in this very thread. That is, you have critiqued what they view as best practices. Educated, trained professionals have said certain things, you directly responded and disagreed. You have also said specific things about how professors should operate, when there are evidently professors who conduct their classes in quite a different manner.

So yes, you have already criticized and disagreed with trained teachers and/or professors. You certainly didn’t assume that professors know best, and that those who allow late papers or enjoy evaluations are right, and you have no basis for criticizing. In fact, you said that they are, essentially, contributing to the ruination of the intellectual caliber of students and that they didn’t know how they should conduct their own classes. So you, with no more basis than your hypothetical wild and crazy college students, have seen fit to challenge professors whose classes you weren’t even in.

And, of course, you continue to sloppily dodge justifying your claim that students can’t validly critique such issues as whether or not a professor is fluent in English, hands back tests on time, loses papers, is a bigot, a racist, a crackpot or commits factual errors. And you haven’t answered as to whether or not you have an iota more justification for disagreeing with trained educators in this thread than your hypothetical students have for disagreeing with their hypothetical professors. I don’t assume you’ll answer either point any time soon, but it is worth drawing attention, again, to the double standards you’re using; you say students aren’t qualified to critique anything their professors do, and yet, you have not given a reason why you are any more qualified to critique the pedagogical views of the trained professionals in this thread or the professors whose policies you are criticizing.

[QUOTE=treis]
Fine, let me amend my example then. No company is going to stand for a customer telling one of their employees that they “hope he chokes on a dick, gets AIDS and dies”.
[/quote]

Well, it’s still a false analogy fallacy, but I would point out that certain companies, given enough money, would probably go to extreme lengths.

[QUOTE=treis]

You don’t seriously think that the university should let comments like this go without discipline, do you?
[/QUOTE]

Of course I do. Anonymous comments, given in a private setting, that have no impact on anything other than the professor’s mood? What good is served by handing out discipline (read: punishment)? What do you think was accomplished in this case? Does the student no longer hate gay people? Is he tolerant? Enlightened? Or has he simply learned that he has to be quiet about his bigotry, any class evaluations can bite him in the ass if he offends the professor or is rude to him, or and next time he wants to insult a gay person, he has to at least type the letter and mail it anonymously?

And, for that matter, where do we draw the line between rudeness and harassment? Is “I hate you, you were a horrible professor” actionable? “You suck?” “I learned nothing from you, I hope you choke on a dick?” “You’re the worst professor ever, take a long walk off a short pier?” "A gerbil could’ve taught your class better than you did? " “You’re boring and you have very bad breath, I fell asleep in your class all the time and you didn’t even notice?” etc, etc, etc…

Who gets to be in charge of the rudeness-o-meter and decide when a comment was rude but not “harassment” and when it was “harassment”? How about when “harassment” justifies violating a stated confidentially agreement and when it doesn’t? And who decides what level of harassment corresponds to what punishment? Can they fine a student? Give them community service? How about expel them? What if it’s a public, taxpayer funded university?

And along those lines, who decides how far it too far for the university to go? If they can hire a handwriting analyst to look at an evaluation, how about suing an ISP to get details of an obnoxious email sent under an anonymous name? How about hiring a private detective to track down someone who submitted a rude and disparaging letter to the school paper? And who is covered by these policies? Current faculty only? Former faculty too? Administration? Any staff member at all? How about other students? Should someone’s child be punished for calling some girl a “bitch”?
How about… a water buffalo?

99

Seriously, Dio, your best bet at this point is to find some patsy who’ll say they hacked your password, and you haven’t been on line since last week…

100

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
No, just that students are the wrong people to evaluate them.

[/quote]

Do you think their evaluation, in the performance appraisal sense, is only a function of what the students say? Obviously not. The professors are getting evaluated by tenure committees and department heads and deans. The students are giving input.

That’s on the other side of the galaxy from fear. Real colleges are not at all like Walden in Doonesbury. I suppose there might be a for-profit school which is really crap out there, which hangs onto students only by giving them a pass, but neither of the colleges my kids go to are like that.

There is a legitimate complaint about professors preferring research to teaching. My professor friends talk about how few classes they can get away with. But that’s very different.