Things That Make Me Laugh...

Nevermind tenure, and faculty union protections (?), who protects the professors from reading anonymous student evaluations at the end of a class?  Why, an Associate Dean for Faculty, of course...

Whatever could go wrong with the method below?  Well, for one, if you assign this important protection job to a Dean, he or she is going to have to find something "hurtful" in the students' evals to justify their... busy work.

Here's an idea:  let the law professors read the evaluations themselves.  Then, if they believe they are threatened or triggered by something a student wrote, then and only then:  report it up.  (If you assign this "job" to an associate dean, surely she will cull the negative reviews by protecting her faculty who keep her in the job...)

If you really have hired such snowflakes as professors -- and your admissions team has let in students who make legitimate threats (as opposed to honest negative comments* that might hurt the professors' feelings...), how about... hiring a working-class, work-study student at $15/hour to skim through the evals before they go to the professor.  That person would not have the incentive (at what?  $85,000 annually and up?) to justify their needing to "protect" the faculty, as such.

I'm glad for Twitter.

It reveals these professional people -- how little they are really doing for their admin overhead pay -- and how frightened they are when others allegedly below them on life's totem pole, tell the truth.  You want us to like you?  Read the evaluations, and consider taking them seriously.  Do your job, and if your job is a joke, (anyone can spend time reading evaluations at the end of a semester, it's not like grading exams even) and you could potentially do it... in vacation in Paris at the beginning of your summer break, maybe it's more a work-study job at $15 per hour, then something a Yale-educated tax professor should be... taking on...

Haha.  I'm laughing, really.

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Susanna

@susannahtahk

What does your school/department do about potentially abusive comments in evals and their disproportionate race/gender impact?

Victor Fleischer

@vicfleischer

·

Apr 22

Replying to

@susannahtahk

I believe our Associate Dean is tasked with reading all the evaluations and removing any evaluation with inappropriate comments. It’s a bit of extra work but good practice in my opinion. Doesn’t solve the general bias problem but reduces harm.

Thanks.  That's a model I'd like to move toward here, and it’s helpful to know that other schools already have.

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Jonathan 

@jsench

Replying to

@susannahtahk

@sarahlawsky

and 3 others

I think the entire eval should be tossed because the numeric inputs are surely also spoiled by the existence of inappropriate/illegal/beyond the bounds comments. But I have no idea what we do with ours.

Susannah Tahk

@susannahtahk

·

Apr 22

Replying to

@jsench

@sarahlawsky

and 3 others

I’m trying to think about systematic ways to protect faculty from having to read racist/misogynist abuse.-

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*As a writer, I used to be the last one in class the last day of class completing my evaluation. I really thought I was helping! They were asking, what did you like about our class? How could I improve? It called for honesty...

One professor I really admired (she left Wisconsin and moved on to Stanford) ---because she actually learned from her students in class, I think, and treated us as equals in some way, listening to our individual perspectives in an evolving field of law, --- missed a few classes one particular semester due to her children's illnesses...

I wrote, "The men don't miss when their children get sick. Maybe... have a better backup plan? An emergency is one thing, but when it happens more than once, it seems to take away from our classroom time, and causes the syllabus to get unnecessarily condensed..." (I actually think I concluded with the statement that the male professors don't miss when their children get sick like that...)

To me, I was being helpful! Letting her know how it looked to the paying students, (as well as those on scholarship, as if those are lessers somehow...) I thought it was constructive criticism, and as a woman, if that were me, I would WANT someone to point it out, the disparity, and how it looked from the student seats...

She was a smart woman, and even if she disregarded the comment, at least, I think, she heard me out. (It wasn't a lot of missing, maybe 2 or 3 classes total, and maybe others didn't mind, but I enjoyed EVERY class, and to me, that time -- what? an hour and a half a week, twice a week... was ours.) I get it. Sometimes, there is no backup, and you just have to miss work for your kids.

Still, I bet after that she had a backup plan -- for her backup childcare plan -- just in case it happened again and one of them went down suddenly with an illness, to the point of missing work, and there was no one who could cover at home.

Nowadays, with an associate dean screening comments, I bet mine would get tossed as... misogynistic or hurtful to someone's feelings. Plus, are we really paying you to read evaluations -- which again, I note, can be done from home, or a streetside cafe in Paris, on the clock, so to speak -- BEFORE the professor hears the one time per semester what the students really are thinking?

Just... no. It's incestuous enough an atmosphere in colleges and law schools today. Let the default be: the professor reads the evalutions before the "faculty dean" gets a look at them, and brings anything truly "illegal" or "threatening" to the administrator's attention. If you see more than one of those per year, me thinks you've either hired too many snowflakes on staff, or your admissions department isn't up to snuff.

Don't listen to your faculty buddies at other schools either, who would tell you "hell, why not just toss the whole evaluation?" because it might "skew the sample set" if the faculty whose feelings you're being (over)paid to protect get wind of what students honestly think of their semester-long performance...

My two cents. Hth!

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*I'm still laughing; don't they even read what they write, or understand how they are coming across??

Susanna

@susannahtahk

My daughter just told me after winning a homework-related negotiation that it is “too easy to bargain [me] in.” No wonder you all put up with me as associate dean!

But your daughter and your faculty aren't the ones paying your salary. If they were, carry on then...

But they're not. Get it? Why this looks so bad? If you honestly want to know how others view you, broaden your perspective and listen to others outside your bubble...

Stand and deliver. You have to learn eventually when you become a grownup and take that huge salary. It's never to late to learn, even for "faculty kids" turned administrators...

This is why: FreeSpeech on Twitter really is gold!

Victor Fleischer

@vicfleischer

·

Apr 22

Replying to

@susannahtahk

Susanna

@susannahtahk