Online prof. rants called out

For more than seven years, opinionated college students from 6,000 schools around the world have spoken out about teachers they love and loathe at Ratemyprofessors.com. Recently some Boston University professors have gotten into the game, calling out comments they thought were unduly harsh -- and leaving some students questioning their professors' professionalism.

"The way I understand it, [the interview] was just for fun," College of Arts and Sciences CORE lecturer Sassan Tabatabai said. "If [the site] was something I took seriously maybe things would have been different."

Earlier this month, on the heels of mtvU's recent acquisition of the popular website, Tabatabai was given the opportunity to react to student-generated comments in an mtvU.com segment called "Professors Strike Back," in which he choose some less-than-delicate words.

In the interview, Tabatabai called the negative-commenters "s--- heads." One anonymous student poster wrote that Tabatabai was "worthless as a professor" and, to this, Tabatabai told mtvU this student was probably "worthless as a student."

Of Tabatabai's 47 ratings, only 15 said his overall quality was "average" or "poor."

"[The site is] a novelty item," he said. "Most professors don't take it seriously because they don't even look at it."

College of Communication senior Nicholas Magliato said he thinks Tabatabai was being unprofessional in his interview.

"As an authority figure, he should watch his mouth because his words and actions have more of an effect to the public than one disgruntled student," he said.

COM administration lecturer Tinker Ready, who was also interviewed by mtvU, said professors do not like the site because they consider many of the comments immature and not helpful toward improving their teaching techniques.

Although Ready said she thinks it is interesting to see what students have to say about her, she puts more stock in official student evaluations.

Ready said the site can also be misleading because it could be used by students who have a grudge against professors.

"Students tend to blame professors when they do bad in class," she said. "It drives me crazy."

Negative comments can lead to unwarranted bad reputations, math and statistics professor Louis Bianco said.

"Once an accusation is made [against a professor], the cat's already out of the bag," he said.

International relations professor David Palmer said the site's evaluations can be deceptive for students.

"It's totally random," he said. "There is no control over the degree to which the comments genuinely reflect the views of the class."

However, some students cannot understate the importance of the website.

"I think it's a useful tool when choosing the classes you want to take, especially for a slacker like me who wants to take the easiest class possible," CAS junior Mary Flannelly said.

COM freshman Lauren Bernard said she chose her class schedule based entirely on ratings from Ratemyprofessors, picking classes that other students said were easy and had good professors.