Con-U Profscan ban

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by George Maddux

Concordia students hoping to find evaluations of professors may soon have to do it old-fashioned gossip-style now that a Web site offering anonymous impressions has been pressured to shut down. The site, called Profscan.com, was first put online as a student project by now-graduated students three years ago, and was taken over by a volunteer last fall named Victor Tudor Tutu.

The site had received and posted 3,100 teacher reviews since its inception and was set up so reviews would appear immediately. The systems operator would weed out offensive comments afterwards. The problem started when two posts, emanating from different computers and different names, criticized a female professor as racist--Tudor Tutu foggily recalls that she was described as either being too pro- or anti-Jewish.

After Christmas, Tudor Tutu, an electrical engineering student, returned to find 300 new posts and missed the possibly slanderous missives. One post was up for a week, the other for two days. The professor reportedly threatened to sue the Concordia Student Union, which has endorsed the site, for $1,000, and has since increased her demand to $3,000. The CSU has distanced itself from the service and Tudor Tutu feels the CSU is passing the blame. "They stabbed us in the back. They had access to the site and had the same power as I do. They could have checked the messages [and removed them] at any time." He says that he hopes to put the site back up in an improved fashion after the dust settles.