The Student Senate passed a bill Wednesday evening that proposed ClassEvals be made public to students who are deciding what classes to add to their schedules.
The main push for the ClassEval Publication Act came from students who were displeased with the university’s relatively short 10-day drop-date period that the UNC Board of Directors enacted in 2014.
The bill states that, since students have such little time to drop classes, ClassEval should be used to benefit students by providing public student feedback on the courses they are interested in taking.
The product of this legislation could be compared to online evaluation websites such as Rate My Professor and Koofers. These websites provide public feedback in an anonymous web forum, which many university students consider beneficial.
“Making ClassEvals public does have its benefits because if the evaluations are truthful, they can help sway a student’s decision as to whether taking a certain class would be beneficial to them,” said Charlotte Rogus, a freshman studying animal science.
Diya Sashidhar, the academics committee chairwoman of the Student Senate, said the bill was created to give students more information about a class before enrolling.
Sashidhar said she will be meeting with the standing committee on the evaluation of teaching on Friday to discuss how the bill could be implemented.
In addition to the ClassEval Act, the Student Senate also reviewed and passed the Advisor Eval Act, which would provide students with the opportunity of evaluating their academic advisers annually.
The Student Senate recognized that there is no official way to evaluate academic advisers. This is seen as unfair by the students seeing as how students are assigned an adviser in their academic departments that they are required to work with throughout their college careers.
The Student Senate passed this bill which recommends that NC State provide students with optional adviser evaluations to be conducted annually. These evaluations will be anonymous, not requiring students to submit their personal information.
“I think being able to evaluate advisers would be very helpful,” said Graham Whitehouse, a freshman studying first-year engineering. “I had a negative experience with contacting my adviser, and this evaluation could help give them advice to help them improve.”
Once a bill is passed in the Student Senate, Student Body President Khari Cyrus must sign it before it can be implemented. Cyrus has 10 class days to sign or veto the bill.