A Letter Concerning CTECs From Professor Maxwell Schroeder
Dear Northwestern Students and Faculty,
From Yik Yak to Collegiate ACB, I am absolutely sickened by the recent surge in anonymous gossip technology that has infiltrated the Northwestern community. Although the administration quickly and efficiently took down the horrific Morty’s Angel’s, the fact is that an even more malicious site remains, one that is even endorsed by the University. I am, of course, talking about CTECs.
For all the geeds unaware, CTECs is a site used to anonymously “rate” and “comment” on professors from behind the cowardice of a computer screen[i]. While some argue that CTECs is all in good fun, I would say tell that to the professors’ whose feelings you’ve deeply hurt.
How disgusting is it to boil another human being down to a set of numbers falling on a scale of 1-6? Such a practice is horrifically objectifying, and doing so creates a false hierarchy among professors[ii]. Sure, many of the 5’s and 6’s may not see the harm in a site like CTECs, as they go home and make love to their supple spouses while shouting their section scores, but for us 2’s and 3’s? I can hardly look in the mirror of my studio apartment without seeing an ugly black number stamped right below the receding hairline on my forehead[iii].
Oh, and as if the comments section remedies this dilemma. Words are so much crueler than numbers. We professors are not infallible. If you prick us, do we not bleed?[iv] If you tickle us, do we not laugh?[v] If you poison us, do we not die?[vi] And if you wrong us, do we not revenge?
Well, now we shall revenge. You thought giving a midterm the Monday after Dillo was bad? You little fucks don’t even know what’s coming.
Sincerely,
Professor Maxwell Schroeder
Department of English
2.3 CTECs Rating[vii]
[i] Oh it’s “lame” that I don’t let you use your computer in class? You need it to take notes? Well guess what? I never used a computer in class while I was an undergrad, and guess what it got me? A B.A. from Columbia University and a PhD from Harvard. Yeah, that’s TWO Ivy League schools, you Big 10 Neanderthals. You can go 50 minutes without your precious Facebook.
[ii] We can’t all teach rocks for jocks and have movie days, can we, Professor Ralph Davis? Spend a quarter teaching a bunch of hung-over 18 year olds Milton’s Paradise Lost at 9 a.m. and THEN let’s see you get a 5.2 average, turd.
[iii] Is that what you wanted, Diane?? A man with a full head of hair and the self-esteem of a young Charlton Heston? Tell me. Was it the sex? Is that why you ran off with that minor league baseball player? I still love you.
[iv] This is Shylock’s infamous “Hath Not a Jew Eyes?” speech from The Merchant of Venice, which yes, was completely fair game to ask on a pop quiz, and if you had even SPARKNOTED the play, you would have gotten right, so no, I don’t think my quizzes were “unreasonable.”
[v] SORRY my class wasn’t “fun” enough; I didn’t realize I was supposed to incorporate a stand-up comedy routine and a few rounds of Crazy 8’s into my discussion of parallax within James Joyce’s Ulysses, which is only one of THE GREATEST NOVELS IN THE ENTIRE CANON, YOU SHIT EATING MONKEYS.
[vi] I’d like to see you fucking try.
[vii] Please, I’d even settle for a 3.0. I have nothing else.
