Easy now, Ian, thought Henry, that was the year that Randy started teaching.
As if he had heard Henry's silent coaching, Ian testified as if his life depended upon it—his professional life did. He told a long heart-wrenching tale of the terrible student evaluations he received in the radiology course. He had very nearly not been reappointed a couple of times but Lyle had fought for him.
Over and over again, at every opportunity, he came back to the years of deleterious critiques passed in by the students. Obviously, this had to be because Trenchant manipulated the students.
"Some of the things commonly written on the critiques were, 'Why isn't she lecturing?' 'Course is totally disorganized' and this is wrong because I am not a disorganized individual; the course is very well organized."
"Did you ever have her lecture to see what the students' reaction would be?" asked Jane.
"We'd talked about it," he replied.
Ian continued, "Along with the many comments to have her lecture, the students wrote how she was the only one who knew anything about radiology and that Randy and I should get out of the course and let her teach it. As I looked through the SmurFFs these comments just jumped out at me. When I was a student, I never wrote such things about my professors."
There was, however, a change in the critiques the year the accused was not teaching the course. "A complete flip-flop," Ian asserted. "The students liked the course and the people who taught it."
Henry ducked his head and smiled grimly thinking that these 'flip-flop' SmurFFs would damn well not be seen by the panel, I'll see to that. Ian is really stretching the truth here since those SmurFFs he's talking about are more flop than flip. True, the students didn't lambaste Ian and Randy that year as they had in the past, however, in a way, they were just as bad. Nearly every critique carried the name of the student and the date. The few comments they contained were bland almost to the point of being insulting. Most of them contained no comments, as the student just checked off the 'average' number for each category under evaluation. Those that contained comments were all typed. Well, if the panel or Diana asked to see them he would simply say that they had no bearing on the issue.
Henry returned from his reverie just as Ian was saying "....there were even some SmurFFs submitted by the students for Diana, which I couldn't figure out why since she wasn't even teaching the course this year."