Spring 2022 Course Evaluations

We were extremely behind in the syllabus and spent most of class discussing current events, we did not learn a lot and brushed over syllabus content Be more focused on Constitutional law, give a respectful and impartial stance on the rationale for each side and be less concerned with pushing a clear political bias. Spend less time on current events/unrelated personal anecdotes - there were days where we would only have about 40 minutes of actual classroom content in the 1 hour and 50 minute class. Sure, everything was interesting and relevant, but it caused us to fall an entire month behind on the syllabus. Also try to limit the lengths of readings assigned - these readings are so dense and barely any of them were expounded upon in class (outside of the major core cases). Of course this a peculiar year for this course and it is under unfortunate circumstances that we lost our teacher. But if you asked me to evaluate the teaching before the professor switch, I would say this: There was 0 organization to this class. It was too hard to decipher what was to be taught the next day, and we moved slow as molasses through the material. I studied too hard for a midterm that was unfairly designed and the lack of understanding when we returned to class after that exam broke my heart. NO acknowledgment of the majority of the class failing it seemed rude, honestly, that it had not been dealt with nor was there an apology for the exam showing us our grades pre- curve and prior to removing the uncounted answers. Staying on track with the syllabus would have been really helpful. We wasted the majority of class time talking about current events that weren’t necessarily relevant to the material we were supposed to be learning that week. We also spent a significant amount of time on the history and context and not on the actual principles. exam preperation- what to expect on exams I dont believe its fair to test on material that will not and has not been covered in the class room setting with the hopes that the curve will just save everyone. especially if I am 36 thousand a semester for this education. At the beginning of April we were one month behind on readings, then had to abruptly switch professors. thus, the class has essentially skipped covering the Bill of Rights. It would have been helpful to have a syllabus at the beginning of the semester which outlined the assigned readings by week. Class was often not as focused or structured as it could have been which caused us to get behind. Discussion about current events was interesting but it often took up much of class time and I left class feeling like I didn’t take away what I needed to from the assigned readings. The biggest problem with Constitutional Law was the schedule. Having a class that ought be so engaging and discussion-based, so rife with the need for independent critical thinking and full of information beyond basic doctrines, cannot be at the end of the longest day in our schedule and the sole class on a Friday. Constitutional Law always occurs on the two points in the week at which we were most exhausted, which was maddening.

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