STU professors concerned by lewd comments from students
Lewd comments written by students on evaluation forms for female professors is causing some concern at St. Thomas University.
Karla O'Regan, an associate professor of criminology, says she "felt nauseous" the first time she received a sexually explicit comment on a course evaluation by a student.
O'Regan says she only receives a handful of such comments in a year, but says they bear talking about, given discussions about campus sexual assaults and sexually related online comments at the dentistry school at Dalhousie University in Halifax earlier this year.
"I'd like to imagine it's a bit of a watershed moment — that we're talking about rape culture, that we're talking about gender inequities, that it's starting to move itself into the common sense," said O'Regan.
"Very rarely do we get a very sexual explicit comment about a sex act that they think should be done to you or you should have experienced."
Kelly Bronson, the acting director of Science and Technology Studies at STU, has had a few evaluations which talked about her appearance along with her teaching skills. It's not the comments that concern her.
"This happens at the level of student-teacher relationship, but then how else is sexism playing out throughout the academy, maybe in more dangerous ways," she said.
"There's lots of evidence to suggest that hiring committees for example, academic hiring committees, display strong gender bias."
Rodger Wilkie, an assistant professor, has had students label him "sexy," "cute," and "passionate," among other things on evaluations.
"Some comments on my pony tail and I have had at least one comment that was of, shall we say, a rather lewd nature," said Wilkie.
The comments don't bother Wilkie, but he says it is concerning some students don't understand the professor-student relationship is a professional one and comments should reflect that.
The administration at STU says it will be checking with all of its professors to get an understanding of the scope of the issue.
