Should end of the semester student evaluations for professors be released to students when they are signing up for classes? Well, that is the question that our student government has seemed to answer for us — and it is yes.

This is mainly because ratemyprofessor.com, which is heavily referred to in the SGA resolution, isn’t a credible source when looking up information about possible professors. The evaluations are meant for the administration so they can determine how well a professor is doing, not so students can be picky about which professor to take or not to take.

In the resolution, it states that releasing these evaluations to students would “benefit the overall academic success of students…eliminating ratemyprofessor.com as the default research option for many students.” But the website isn’t the default option. Yes, students use it but it isn’t as unreliable as SGA is making it out to be.

Granted, having a professor’s hottness as a rating isn’t the best way to judge whether or not to take a class with that person, but if a certain professor has 30 ratings and they are all good ratings it is safe to say that the professor is at the very least competent in his or her class. There are a few strange ratings and comments here and there but that is to be expected.
The student evaluations that SGA is after won’t be any different from those on ratemyprofessor.com. Some students take the evals seriously, but there are those that don’t do them or rush through them and don’t leave any comments.

Relying on someone else’s evaluation/opinion of a professor is not what selecting classes should be about. It should be about selecting classes you need rather than the professor teaching it.