U. Pittsburgh to Remove ‘Negative Comments’ From Faculty Surveys
“will allow for faculty to petition for the removal of comments they do not like”
It turns out that faculty members can be snowflakes, too. Is this really necessary?
The College Fix reports:
Pitt to remove ‘negative comments’ from faculty surveys
University of Pittsburgh professors will be able to ask for “harmful” and “negative comments” to be removed from their student evaluations under a new policy.
The decision has drawn criticism from a free speech expert.
The new policy will allow for faculty to petition for the removal of comments they do not like, according to the Office of Measurement and Evaluation of Teaching.
The types of survey responses targeted by this policy seem to vary throughout the report, ranging from “incendiary and harmful” comments about race and gender, to “negative” or “unactionable” comments,” according to The Pitt News.
Faculty can ask a “panel made up of faculty, students, and teaching consultants” to review flagged comments, according to Lisa Votodian, who oversees the surveys.
The panel could then decide to remove the comments and change ratings, Votodian said. She has not responded to an emailed request for comment in the past month asking for more information on the policy.
The College Fix also attempted to contact Eric Arroyo, who briefed faculty on the new policy alongside Lisa Votodian, but he also did not respond in the past month. Both Votodian and Arroyo were asked for clarification of what types of comments can be removed and whether they have concerns of artificially raising evaluation scores via removal.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression declined to comment on the free speech implications of the policy.
However, legal scholar John Banzhaf said the removal of comments could create a free speech problem.
“Giving anyone or any group the power to remove something which was said by another interferes with their free speech,” Banzhaf, a George Washington University law professor, told The Fix via email.
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Comments
Paraphrasing Garrison Keillor, The University of Pittsburgh is where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the professors are above average.
I suspect that the only faculty who want this are the faculty who shouldn’t be there in the first place. They are the ones who believe that their credentials shoud supercede their credibility.
I used to have to review instructors’ student evaluations. I always told faculty that anyone with NO bad comments are probably bland and boring instructors. A good policy is to drop the two best evaluations and the two worst evaluations and consider all the ones in the middle. This idea of instructors selecting which bad comments to expunge is crazy. It invalidates the use of student evaluations at all.
The Office of Measurement and Evaluation of Teaching is run by ex DC cops.
This is a BRILLIANT idea! So clever!
Once this policy is implemented it will be impossible to mock or criticize. If we get rid of negative comments and permit only positive ones, everything will become positive, our attitudes will change, all problems will go away, everyone will be happy, and joy will prevail everywhere! The people who thought this up deserve the highest praise, they have done us such a great service. It is no exaggeration to say Nobel Peace Prizes are in order!