Student Assembly has allowed one of its few useful services to the community, the SA Course Evaluation Guide, to deteriorate. The number of students who review courses for the guide, which catalogues student opinions on professors and courses, has plummeted. Outdated course reviews from students who graduated long ago litter the guide while relatively new courses have far less, if any, student feedback. Without a variety and abundance of reviews for each course, the guide fails to give students an adequate picture of offered classes. All in all, the guide has fallen to pieces.
The College's institution of its own online evaluation system this fall undoubtedly has contributed to the decreased use of the SA Guide, but the blame does not lie entirely on the College's system. Assembly leadership has all but forgotten about the guide and instead is focusing on extensive discussions of social issues and various student advocacy efforts. Whereas previous Assemblies offered students incentives to contribute to the guide, no such program exists anymore. Not long ago, Student Assembly would inundate the campus with BlitzMail messages and posters to effectively promote the guide, each of which has uniformly vanished or diminished under Student Body President Tim Andreadis '07. In the fall, while the number of blitzes that students received concerning the guide noticeably declined, alarmist blitzes inaccurately relating news about two missing women were sent to students from that same Assembly.
Some have suggested that the College should make its evaluation public, eliminating the need for the SA Guide. This idea is not viable. The feedback students give to their professors is -- and should be -- different from their advice to classmates. And although the guide is currently on life support, it would be salvageable, if only the Assembly tried.
When Andreadis took over Student Assembly, the guide was on a short list of Assembly functions that substantially benefited the student body. The Assembly would do a great service to the same student body if it revamped its efforts to produce a useful course-selection resource.
