Spring 2022 Course Evaluations

to address positive/negative feedback regarding the course itself, but I could not leave an evaluation without mentioning the absolute horror that was our TA for this semester. Your class was always funny and the delivery of the material made the subject interesting. I’m a bit nervous about the final as the number of cases and note cases that we are supposed to be able to utilize seems a bit daunting. Nonetheless, this is a part of the law school experience and I thank you for a good semester. TA (Rotenstein) was pretty awful. Was not welcoming when it came to asking him questions and would throw an attitude/belittle you when anyone asked him a question. Not an adequate TA. As a former teacher, I think I have a higher threshold for frustrating situations with professors because I know how difficult teaching can be. However, even I was frequently disappointed with how this class was instructed by both Professor Robertson and TA Leon. I will discuss them both separately: Professor Robertson, perhaps because of his age or old-school experiences, frequently made my peers uncomfortable in the examples he’d use to demonstrate certain points. Although I know certain tort topics are uncomfortable in themselves, I firmly believe it is possible to teach difficult topics without contributing to or increasing the discomfort. For example, our criminal law professor last semester approached difficult topics, such as rape, with grace. Contrastingly, Professor Robertson once created hypos about creepy men on the train, in detail and with somewhat of a theatrical performance (he would like, put his hands on the desks in a creepy way to try to make us laugh). This incident actually made my friend so uncomfortable, she left class crying. I do have a lot of patience for older men in teaching, but it was really frustrating how frequently these sorts of things occurred and how much valuable learning time they took up. Additionally, per no fault of his own, Professor Robertson really could not hear students at all. He would benefit from teaching in smaller classrooms with fewer students--he could not hear students in the front rows let alone the back of the class, and we would spend countless minutes repeating questions/answers to him. Eventually, he would give up and try to answer the question he thought he might have heard, which oftentimes was not useful/related to the question asked. Leon: Leon was an unapproachable, unkind, aggressive TA. As a former teacher, it broke my heart to see how stupid he frequently made people feel for asking valid questions. In the beginning of class once, a student asked if he was going to make his review slides available to those of us who did not attend his review session. In front of all 50 of us, he angrily and sarcastically retorted, "Uhh, I don’t know, what has the answer to that question been all semester?" Although the (one) other review session we had had did get posted later on, this one had not been posted yet and it had been 6 or 7 days since the review. It was a fair question, not asked with any rudeness, and he snapped at her in front of everyone. It really embarrassed that classmate of mine. This is just one instance of his aggression as a TA: as I sit here typing this in the class time Professor Robertson allotted for these evaluations, Leon is making passive-aggressive, loud comments

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