My social theory professor explained the origins of the Student Rating of Teaching Effectiveness forms to my class. Apparently they were started in the 1970s by a group of students who wanted to better their education, much to the disapproval of school administrations. Over the course of time, schools began to take over the evaluations in order to control them.

Thirty years later, they have changed from a helpful student aide in picking classes to a punitive device used to badger teachers into giving better grades. But here we are at Penn State, where we have no access to the results, and yet we fill them out in every class.

I write to suggest that we as students begin to peacefully protest the SRTE. Simply fill out the top part of the form and then write over the blank answer bubbles, "I do not fill these out until the results are made available to students." Would that really be asking too much?