Yale University has just blocked a student-developed course and instructor evaluation website.

Peter Xu, a senior in Morse College and a co-founder of the CourseTable that was just shut-down, makes a compelling case for administrators to reverse their decision.

We are disappointed that an institution we so love has let us down. It has let down its students, who pay $58,600 a year to attend, by preventing them from making the most of their credits. It has let down the technologists and innovators of Yale, by letting them know that making things better and easier-to-use is not appreciated. It has let down our academics, who thrive on freedom of expression and the wealth of resources on the Internet. Blocking sites that Yale disapproves of reminds us more of China’s Great Firewall than one of the world’s leading research institutions.

At every point during the process, Harry Yu and I have tried to accommodate Yale. …

In return for our transparency, Yale was silent and opaque. They said little, while trying to censor and disappear the application from Yale’s networks without revealing it to the public — because this act of censorship would hurt Yale’s image more than Bluebook+ could. This started on Friday, when Yale began blocking the IP address of the particular server to make it look like it was merely our servers that were down.

We understand Yale’s concern. CourseTable shows average evaluation ratings very prominently, but we encourage students to read evaluations and consider their own interests when they first sign in to the website. To cooperate, we were even willing to remove the numbers from the page, and leave simply color-coded ratings. But on balance, students who choose a class rated “Excellent” over “Good” tend to learn more, attend classes more often, and enjoy the experience more. Students will also realize that these courses are popular and hard to get into (as they should be), and that they should also pursue classes that align with their specific interests, or take a risk with a new professor. Moreover, it helps us recognize the excellent teaching that Yale commends. Yale assumes that students are not smart enough to make the right choices for themselves. I believe that they are.

Yale’s administration hopes that, like after closing Commons for dinner, this will blow over soon. But there is only one solution: Yale must embrace the values it abandoned: transparency, innovation, creativity, freedom of expression, and most of all, respect for its students. Deans Marichal Gentry and Mary Miller, traditionally seen as champions of the students, have both been involved in shutting down the site. Please petition them at petition.yaleplus.com and politely let them know your views. We hope that Yale will reverse its decision — and support innovation by students, for students.