USG sets up anonymous e-mail site

The USG will launch a new website today allowing students to send anonymous emails to their professors.

"You can write stuff like 'I think you use PowerPoint too much' or 'I think your lectures would be more interesting if you asked for questions at the end,' " USG president Rob Biederman '08 said. "We trust and hope that people will not abuse the system."

Biederman said students often feel uncomfortable approaching professors about problems or complaints they have about the class, and this website would give them a way to express these concerns without fear of repercussions.

The USG will screen comments to "ensure appropriateness," Biederman said in an email following the meeting. "The comments are ... completely anonymous," he said, adding that USG officers would only see the comment, never its accompanying netid.

"It's as anonymous as the crush website," said vice president Josh Weinstein '09, who coded both sites.

Academics chair Sarah Breslow '08 said in an email that the course feedback site "will serve as a useful tool for setting [her] agenda." Breslow is also an photography editor for The Daily Princetonian.

She added, "seeing the comments following one pattern ... can then let me know that that is something that matters to students and is important to improve. But again, the comment will in no way be tied to the netid."

"It's probably not the greatest idea," Courtney Quiros '10 said in an interview last night. "That would be more a tool for people to express their anger than give helpful comments. I just think people aren't that mature. I wouldn't use it because I think that if you can't attach a name to a complaint it doesn't have much honor."

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Also at last night's USG meeting, campus and community affairs chair Cindy Hong '09 urged the USG to "abolish PINS as an institution and just have it built into the USG." PINS, short for Princeton in the Nation's Service, was launched in September 2005 as an initiative to promote community service and civic engagement among Princeton students.

Though PINS was originally designed to coordinate the work of other University organizations, including the SVC, the Pace Center and Community Based Learning Initiative (CBLI), Biederman said that the program was not "well-liked by the people on campus responsible for civic engagement."

"The PINS Walkathon [of fall 2005] was generally perceived as a failure," Breslow said. The event was meant to be a fundraiser for Princeton Young Achievers, a group that organizes after-school activities for low-income families. Event organizers incurred a net loss, however, by buying a large number of T-shirts for participants, she added.

"Right now, nothing is happening with PINS," Hong said of the initiative, which was given a $2000 budget for the fall 2006 semester. "I would like for us not to even have it."