The disheartening news that ASI has shut down ASPECT (the Web site that tracked ratings and comments on faculty) came as no surprise to me. After looking at some of the remarks on the site, I was dismayed to see that a few had used the forum as a weapon against certain professors. Sure, many of the professors probably deserved negative feedback, but leaving inaccurate comments and personally attacking the professors is a different story. For the most part, comments made on the site seemed to remain professional, but once again, this is an issue of a few ruining it for the rest of us.

And I am sure that regular users of the site would agree.

The ability to look up other students? opinions on classes and professors is vital to obtaining your degree with the least amount of hardship?we all want to avoid the classes and professors that make us question why we even wanted to attend college in the first place. Everyone knows that those professors exist, and it would be nice for students to be able to know who they are.

Obviously, the ASPECT system didn?t work out the way it was supposed to. But that shouldn?t stop students from learning valuable information about their prospective professors. As of right now, students are left with word-of-mouth evaluations of professors and Sacrate.com?ASPECT?s low rent cousin. Neither of those will ever do. Sacrate.com is subject to the same problems that ASPECT was and you are lucky if comments you post your freshman year will show up before you graduate. (I posted comments several months ago that still have yet to appear.)

ASI should begin looking at new ideas to replace ASPECT. It is vital that we get a system up and running before the end of the semester. ASI and faculty representatives should sit down and create a system that would please both sides?one that avoids the pitfalls of the ASPECT Web site.

Perhaps they could use the countless departmental evaluations that are filled out near the end of every semester. Many of us fill out these evaluations only to never see or hear of the results again. The results should be published on a Web page for every student to review. This would allow easy access to important and accurate information. The information would be accurate because instead of being based on five or six severely unhappy students, the evaluations would be based on most of the students? opinions?thus providing a wide range of views.

Of course that is only one of the many ideas out there. We should closer examine all the ideas to come up with the best solution before the end of the semester.

Brendan D. Wonnacott is a Government & History major and is opinion editor of The State Hornet. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].