The University Council should stop playing games with students.

It is bad enough that the NIU administration will not allow teacher evaluations to be published without the teachers volunteering the evaluations and having to go through a special process with the Student Association. But now the UC is worrying about the NIU “bureaucracy” being involved and making it even more difficult for the SA to pass out the evaluations.

NIU students should have every right to make sure their evaluations count. At the very least, if a certain teacher receives an unacceptable amount of negative feedback from his students, other students have the right to know about it.

With the ever-increasing tuition we pay, students have the right to take a class with a teacher who at least cares as much about teaching as he does about publishing and research.

Of course when the Illinois Board of Higher Education releases a critical report of NIU faculty, these same faculty members make it known they feel they are being unfairly judged on hearsay. Well, PROVE IT.

If members of the UC believe strongly enough that NIU faculty offer good educational opportunities, then help the SA with its endeavors to publish evaluations instead of playing games about who should distribute the SA teacher evaluation forms.

If NIU faculty has nothing to worry about except the chance of typos in the published evaluations, then cooperate with the SA instead of needlessly fighting them.