“Look, I’m really not that bad. I take very good care of my cat and don’t steal cancer research money, so I think this notion of me ‘not caring’ about my class is a bit of a stretch.”
The professor’s words echoed throughout the sparsely populated Frey 100.
“So looking at the reviews here, I see some people complaining about the quiz dates being moved around and not being accurate on the syllabus. Moving forward, these will now be random ‘vibe checks.’ My daughter loves saying that. Or I think she does, haven’t seen her since I lost custody,” he said, citing a syllabus that hasn’t been updated since he started teaching the class in 2002. He went on to remind his students that if they had any complaints, they could go to his office hours.
One student attempted to do just that with no results. “Yeah, I tried to go to his office, but the syllabus says he can be reached ‘at his corner of the Starbucks in the union.’ What the fuck is the union?”
The professor in question has been bombarded with class evaluations accusing him of presenting PowerPoints that aren’t his, leaving unprepared TAs to teach the class, making students wait outside of the classroom while he prints more exams during a test and putting on Crash Course videos for an entire hour and twenty-minute lecture. One unconfirmed rumor even claims the professor said class reviews were pointless because “it’s not like you have another option for completing your major anyway.”
The Press managed to catch one student as he left mid-lecture, and he divulged some of the abuse: “I mean, at first I was like okay, sure, maybe this is a good way to introduce a topic in simple terms that the professional who makes six figures will go into detail about. Then he let the next video autoplay and I knew this was only the eye of the shitstorm. He left his cursor in the middle of the screen the whole time too.”
Despite repeated attempts to contact the department head about these transgressions, the only email students have managed to receive was an automated message saying: “We have investigated ourselves and found that the professor in question has tenure. The cost of automating this system is covered by your technology fee.”
Another student who walked out of the lecture tried to clarify.
“So I keep getting the same message. I try going to the person in charge of my major. She says she can’t do anything, maybe try the ombuds office. So I go there, some guy listens to me bitch for twenty minutes, and he’s real nice about it. Says he understands exactly why I’m upset and that this is unacceptable. Then he tells me he can’t do anything, but he’ll make sure to let the administration know to raise graduate fees, putting ‘trickle-down pressure’ on professors because less people will be able to afford the graduate classes — ”
At this point the student began to scan the room nervously, stopping when he saw Wolfie shaking his head in disapproval from the doorway of the first hall Frey bathroom.
“N-no further comment.”
Back inside Frey 100, The Press managed to catch the last five minutes of the class.
“Now that we understand each other, let’s all make my class reviews a little more reflective of the truth — because if I see any student needs to get into my class to keep their TAP funding for the year, and you get screwed by a late enrollment, I certainly wouldn’t vouch for someone who wouldn’t do the same for me.”
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