Oracle Online

Back in my pre-tenure days, when I’d read the occasional derogatory comment on my course evaluations, I knew at least that such misguided attempts at criticism would only ever be seen by my department chair, the dean, and me. I had to trust that such comments would receive the response they deserved, that is, they’d be ignored as inappropriate attacks based in ignorance and prejudice. But it would be incorrect to suggest that those awful comments didn’t have an impact, didn’t make my job just a little bit harder, didn’t make this campus a just a little less safe, didn’t sting.

Stripped down, the “rate your professor” site is little more than an unregulated web forum for people to post pretty much whatever they want about whomever they choose. The comments students post about their professors, well intentioned or not, serve no real purpose, so it is hard to assign any meaning to them.

I acknowledge a site like this one for what it really is, a savvy marketing device designed to generate customer “hits” for advertisers who buy space on the site. Its success depends specifically on its ability to
attract: The more provocative the content, the greater the number of visitors. But I also want to acknowledge the potential of a site like this to be misused for hateful forms of anonymous attack. It’s the virtual equivalent of scrawling something on the door of a public bathroom stall, only the viewership is much broader.

I admit to wondering who else might have read this particular post attached to my name. Some of my colleagues, perhaps, many of whom are also friends? Hamline students who’ve taken my classes over the years, and those who haven’t yet? Prospective students thinking about whether Hamline’s student body might be a place where they’d fit in? How broadly cast is the frustration, the uneasiness such a comment elicits? My dad, who’s a biologist and career academic just like me, has he seen it? My mother? What about my young daughter, whose rapidly expanding vocabulary is blessedly yet devoid of such derogatories, what if she stumbles onto the site by accident or via Google? How will I answer her questions?

Sometimes it is necessary to respond to personally directed attacks, even the anonymous, stupid kind. So, for the record č Bauerle is a science educator who is passionate about learning and doesn’t mind admitting it to a room full of students.

I am a professor who has taught for 12 and a half years at this institution, who takes seriously her commitment to professionalism even when it means taking risks in the classroom. I set high standards in my classes, not just because it’s the right thing to do or because my colleagues are doing it too, but because experience has shown me that most Hamline students want to feel challenged, want the chance to succeed.

That I am also queer-identified should really come as no surprise to anyone, especially since I shouted it into a microphone right in front of Old Main several years ago at a Coming Out Day rally. And though my identity, like everyone else’s, tags along happily with me wherever I go, I don’t think it is really central to how clearly I derive the Michaelis-Menten equation for biochemistry students, or how much drama I try to instill in my lectures on the physiology of plant defense, or how I try to maintain an interesting and relevant syllabus in Biology of Women, or how hard I make my tests. Those things come from experience, from the balance of successes and failures I’ve had in the classroom over the years, and from always taking seriously the legitimate feedback I get from students in all my classes. To suggest otherwise is offensive.
To intentionally misuse any public space, be it bathroom stall or commercial web site, for homophobic slurs against me or anyone else is harassment.

Cynthia Bauerle
Professor, Department of Biology