Emory Students Want Course Evaluations to Include Rating for Microaggressions
This is how progressive concepts slowly make their way into the mainstream.
The FIRE blog reports.
Emory Students Demand Course Evaluations Include Rating for Microaggressions
College course evaluations, while valuable, do not always give a precise measure of the competence of a professor. Students, who have been judged all semester by professors, have an opportunity to pass judgment themselves. Some of them take the task seriously and offer constructive comments. For others, it’s payback time.
This is a process with which I am familiar: I teach appellate legal writing at George Mason University’s law school, a required course which some students approach with as much delight as a trip to the dentist. I do my best to make the material engaging, and some students respond well, but others don’t. One student simply wrote: “I’m sorry, I still hate legal writing.” Fair enough.
But what if students were encouraged to report, anonymously, any way in which their professors offended them over the course of the semester? Would this be a constructive way to improve professors’ teaching, or would it restrict the free flow of ideas at a university by creating a chilling effect on faculty in the classroom?
We may soon find out, because that’s exactly what students at Emory University have demanded, as reported by The Emory Wheel. On December 2, 2015, a group calling itself the Black Students of Emory published a formal list of grievances and demands for reform. The fourth demand involves changing course evaluation forms so that students can report any professor who has committed a “microaggression” during the semester:
4. We demand that the faculty evaluations that each student is required to complete for each of their professors include at least two open-ended questions such as: “Has this professor made any microaggressions towards you on account of your race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, language, and/or other identity?” and “Do you think that this professor fits into the vision of Emory University being a community of care for individuals of all racial, gender, ability, and class identities?” These questions on the faculty evaluations would help to ensure that there are repercussions or sanctions for racist actions performed by professors.
We demand that these questions be added to the faculty evaluations by the end of this semester, Fall 2015.
Emory Students Demand Course Evaluations Include Rating for Microaggressions (FIRE)
Comments
Essentially, these students are demanding that “My professor doesn’t like me, and is a big meanie!” supersede Constitutional freedoms.
I say go for it. We need to let them drive the country straight into a ditch and complete the process. Not only will profs from foreign countries stop teaching here, EVERYONE will eventually stop teaching here.
I hope that there are Professors who would take pride in cranking the micro-aggression meter up to 11+. As the President of Wesleyen put it “This Is Not a Daycare. This Is a University.”