I fill out professor reviews diligently, but I shrug my shoulders after I hand them in.

This week I’ve heard rumors ranging from every single evaluation is read to reviews with all poor or all positive marks are thrown away.

I don’t know who or what to believe, but I always give the faculty the benefit of the doubt, and I hope my feedback is taken seriously.

Who knows? Maybe my good reviews have bumped up the pay for my favorite professors. And maybe — hopefully — my bad reviews have caused departments to think twice about giving poor teachers tenure.

But the problem I have with teacher evaluations is they feel like a pointless formality, even if they really are taken seriously.

I think the best solution is for every department to clearly explain how teacher evaluations are handled after students fill them out.

But as always, NIU hasn’t taken the initiative to ensure its students their feedback is effective.

As with handling any problems you have here, you’re often just a number beginning with “Z.” Why should evaluations be viewed any differently?

You can’t have some random student read off a copied piece of paper saying students are a valuable part of determining our educators’ futures. It doesn’t mean anything.

That’s the same thing as hearing “Your call is very important to us” while phoning into the Huskie Shuffle.