University of Missouri students who feel professors have discriminated against them based on their political or religious views will soon be able to file online complaints against the instructors, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported today.

New Web sites under construction at the university’s four campuses will track and record academic-diversity grievances against faculty members for compilation in an annual report.

The monitoring system is a response to a push from the Missouri legislature, which has hotly debated “intellectual pluralism” since last fall. The debate stemmed from a lawsuit against Missouri State University filed by a Christian student, Emily Brooker, who said a professor had retaliated against her for refusing to sign a letter supporting gay adoption. (The case was settled out of court.)

At a meeting of the university’s governing board on Thursday, one of the trustees, David Wasinger, said that the online database would help resolve a “deep-seated problem” at the university and demonstrate credibility to state legislators.

Some faculty leaders, however, questioned whether the tracking system might have a chilling effect on classroom discussion. “When we talk about monitoring what faculty say, people get nervous about that,” said Tim Farmer, president of the University of Missouri at St. Louis’s Faculty Senate. But, he said, “I think people are taking an open-minded view on it as long as it doesn’t change what they teach in their class.” —Paula Wasley