Last week, I sat down to read this semester’s course evaluation forms: forms that assess the quality of the course we’ve been teaching. I take pride in my teaching and work incredibly hard in preparation for each class, thinking carefully about my lesson plans. But these evaluation forms are frequently littered with a smattering of highly personal comments about me – and several students have rated my teaching in tandem with an appraisal of my attractiveness.
The comments are both infuriating and demoralising: how can students think that it is acceptable to evaluate the physical appearance of a tutor on a form assessing their professional proficiency? As a young woman and a feminist, whose approach to knowledge and learning is guided by the principles of inclusion, equality and fairness, these sorts of comments read to me like an attempt to belittle my education, undermine my authority and devalue my agency as their tutor.
How hot, or not, a tutor is has no bearing on their intelligence, knowledge and capability to engage students.
When I took to Twitter to describe my experience – and ask if others had received similar comments – I found that the issue is not just limited to female academics. My screen was filled with responses from men and women. One academic told me that students had complained her nipples were too “prominent”; another said he’d received feedback that his beard was too greasy.
There was a consensus among those who responded that these issues had intensified over the past few years. As students begin to think of themselves as consumers, rather than learners, their attitudes towards those who teach them is changing.
One male academic said he was asked out by a female student in front of a full class and then challenged when he declined; another revealed that after he lost some weight, a female student had talked at great length – again, in front of a full class – about how good he looked. A physics lecturer said she had received evaluation forms that made special comments about her prettiness and another lecturer received one that noted she was a good teacher but, more importantly, looked sexy.
I wasn’t surprised to find that large numbers of early career researchers complained that they had often been challenged on their credentials to teach because they looked young. This has happened to me countless times by students.
I had a student laugh in my face when I told him I was the tutor when I first started teaching.
These disrespectful, ageist challenges to competency speak to rising student sentiment that, given how much they are paying in fees, they don’t want to be taught by junior academics.
But, unfortunately for postdoctoral researchers like myself, feedback forms are important for securing promotion and securing a permanent academic position. It is embarrassing to have evaluation forms featuring inappropriate comments.
Although these issues affect men as well as women, we cannot pretend that we live in an equal playing field, as recent studies have proven. A study by researchers at North Carolina State University indicates that men get higher satisfaction ratings from students, simply for being male. Further research has analysed the important differences in the language used in academic references, showing that people writing letters of recommendation for academic job applicants were more likely to use standout adjectives to describe male candidates than they were describing female applicants. And, studies analysing the comments that appear on ratemyprofessors.com suggest that people tend to think more highly of men than women in professional settings. Curiously, words like “hot” appear pretty evenly on this site for both genders, but then we should remember that ratemyprofessors.com includes “hotness” as a viable category to comment upon. I wonder what kind of results a study of UK student evaluation forms might reveal.
Comments about physical appearance are an attempt to assert power over somebody. When women such as Mary Beard, Nicola Sturgeon and Hilary Clinton are subject to repeated evaluation centred on their physical appearance, rather than their contributions, acumen and achievements, it is unsurprising that students echo this behaviour.
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