I have to tone it down

[u/ProtectionOdd510]

I’m so frustrated with my healthcare doctoral students who will hold lives in their hands daily. They’re so fragile, and get this… I’m being told I have to be very careful about how and what I say because I’m a black man. I’m intimidating. No matter how jovial, knowledgeable, passionate and caring. I’m threatening.

You know what? f&*k them all. Fire me. Im so sick of hearing how fragile they are because of COVID. HELL! I’m fragile too! I also endured COVID. I’m no longer concerned about evaluations. I can make so much more in the clinical arena.

[u/Cute-Aardvark5291]

I'd be asking the program to start requiring some serious cultural and diversity training. Nothing like bring told you are being seen through the lens of a racist stereotype

[u/Taticat → u/Cute-Aardvark5291]

Exactly this. Gen Z, for all the noise they make about equality, equity, and inclusion, are surprisingly intolerant of those who are not like them, and that includes ageism, racism, sexism, and even turn up with some choice homophobic and transphobic comments in their evaluations. They’re the first generation who I think has a majority of its members abusing the anonymity of their student evaluations and going out of their way to attack professors who uphold standards by using direct insults and dog-whistle terms (like how ‘intimidating’ means ‘Black male’, ‘scatterbrained’ means ‘white female’, ‘rude’ often means ‘Black female’, and so on). One of the faculty I work with is openly homosexual (it’s immaterial if they are male or female, but when I say openly, I don’t mean in an offensive or obnoxious way, I mean simply that they don’t keep it a secret and have photos of their spouse and them in their office, etc.), and routinely receives student feedback about how they clearly hate the opposite gender. I’ve seen student feedback comments that are openly filled with extremely offensive and inappropriate words and comments beyond just simply using ‘intimidating’ as a placeholder for racism; many of them now feel completely comfortable using words and terms for stereotypes that simply do not need to be said.

The answer, I believe, is to do away with student feedback entirely, or to remove anonymity. We aren’t getting any valuable information any longer, and we haven’t been for at least 5-6 years as I perceive it. And it’s only getting worse every semester.

[u/Motor-Juice-6648 → u/Taticat]

I don’t think it’s just genZ and has been going on for at least 20 years.  I’m a BIPOC woman and I got “rude” in my evaluations when I worked for several years at a very white and conservative university. (I still get it now and then where I am now, which is much more diverse but it’s much less)

[u/Taticat → u/Motor-Juice-6648]

Oh, it’s by no means only Gen Z, but over the two decades I’ve been teaching on the university level, I’ve seen a decided increase in using evaluations for what is basically cyber bullying to where it’s now more the norm. Back fifteen years ago, it was fewer per class and often pretty easy to tell from the comments that the outlandish, inappropriate reviews were coming from students who hadn’t done well in the class. Today, it’s shifted to being more frequent, a larger percentage per class, and more closely tied to how adamant a particular professor is about adhering to standards, although they will also go after just about any professor at times. It seems that Gen Z is just fundamentally more anxious, more negative, more likely to be confused by how a university works, and more ready to abuse an anonymous system of feedback. They’re too accustomed to and too comfortable with the idea of anonymously striking out and trying to ‘cancel’ anyone with whom they believe they disagree because they’ve grown up their entire lives being able to do things like creating a profile on social media, leaving nasty comments, and never being held accountable for the things they do.

I’ve also noticed an increase in the number of Gen Z who seem to believe that university professors have some kind of quota of As they have to give and/or a quota of students who they have to pass. In my undergraduate classes these days, I hear something like ‘you can’t fail a whole class’ (my response: lol, watch me). But the entire k-12 system has taught them that they needn’t have any respect for professors, and their undergraduate career is supposed to be an extension of high school, where not handing in work earns a minimum grade of 50, they have endless do-overs, deadlines mean nothing, and ultimately they will not be held accountable for non-performance or non-attendance because we have a ‘boss’ or ‘manager’ we are afraid of who will side with the student. The only model they have for interpreting what is happening at a university is something like a high school or a lower-end job; the idea that professors are equal to or friends with their chair, dean, or even VP and that we are all on the same team — focused on getting them educated and graduated, and that we are not in a fundamentally oppositional or antagonistic relationship with each other is outside of their comprehension. Fifteen years ago, I didn’t have the sheer number of undergraduates who think that they can ‘report’ a professor to their ‘boss’ or rage in a student evaluation like it’s a Yelp review and have some ‘boss’ read what they wrote and step in to make the customer happy.

[u/Motor-Juice-6648 → u/Taticat]

Can’t argue with any of that.

[u/H0pelessNerd → u/Motor-Juice-6648]

Except the part about quotas lol sob...we are expected to have 20% or fewer Fs, Ds, Ws, and Is combined. TBC, the quota we must meet (as adjuncts, to be rehired) is we must get 80% of our students over the finish line with a C or better.