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November 03, 2006, 03:37 PM ET
RateMyProfessors (AndTheirLooks)
At some point in time, plenty of professors have had a bone to pick with RateMyProfessors, the Web site that lets students evaluate their instructors (and, in many cases, air their grievances) for all Web surfers to see. Professors’ profiles on the site, after all, are open to abuse — from students upset over their grades, from random visitors posing as students, even from rival instructors.
In fact, the site’s problems run deeper than its penchant for advancing unverified claims, according to Beth Davison, an associate professor of sociology at Appalachian State University who has studied RateMyProfessors. Ms. Davison told The Appalachian that, by soliciting details on instructors’ appearances, the site contributes to an unhealthy “sexualizing of the professorial environment.”
Ms. Davison could hardly have been excited, then, by RateMyProfessors’ newly unveiled “Professor Photo” feature, which allows students to upload pictures of their instructors to the Web site. In a breathlessly worded news release — which poses the pressing question “Is your professor HOT or NOT?” — RateMyProfessor’s president, Patrick Nagle, announced that “camera phones in the classroom have a new meaning.”
According to Mr. Nagle, every submitted image will be “manually reviewed” before it makes it onto the site. But that’s not likely to comfort professors who’d rather not spend their time in the lecture hall dodging undergraduate paparazzi. —Brock Read
Categories: Student-Life, Teaching
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