I also agree that bullying shouldn’t be tolerated by an administration, but I sincerely hope that these investigations are coming in with unbiased minds, as much as possible. Especially when you get to graduate level educations, there is a level of intensity that I believe is necessary to push everyone to be their best. I don’t like the general trend of US society becoming more soft, for lack of better words, in the sense that everything has to be an ordeal and no one has backbone anymore. From my experience, a majority of time students that feel bullied haven’t communicated their situation and feelings to the superior, so there hasn’t been a healthy conversation about expectations vs production vs ability. Even if the student isn’t comfortable talking directly to the superior, there’s numerous different routes in universities to help, most of which can be anonymous if requested. No one should every be attacked personally or demeaned, but there’s nothing wrong with a “you can do better” that motivates a student to stay a couple hours later past “quitting time” and meet expectations.

I’ve heard a lot of the discussion surrounding the effectiveness of student course reviews, and I think I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re meant to separate out the extremes. In my mind, just “good” classes will receive an average amount of review submissions at the end of the semester, and it’ll be obvious reading them that they’re filled with nondescript, bland information. Course evaluations to me are most beneficial in identifying bad instructors and classes, because in this case students will want to make sure their voice is heard. Yes, some reviews will inherently be from poor students without work ethic, but repeated poor reviews should raise a red flag to the department head to at least look into the issue further. In terms of extraordinary instructors/classes, I feel like word travels fast through other avenues so that by the time course reviews are evaluated by the department there’s already been some kind of buzz, so the positive reviews aren’t a surprise.