SHANFIELD: Rating professors with red-hot chili peppers

Let’s just put it out there: If you’re hot, you know it. You can have all the eating disorders and worries about the size of your biceps you want, but those people who are hot, deep down, they know. There will be days when hot people get Fs on tests, dumped or fired, and the first thing they’ll think is, “I’m not hideous.” They won’t tell anyone, but it will make them feel a tiny bit better.

But I think there are people out there who know they aren’t hot and worry that everyone else knows it too. Professor Bob Zelnick is one of them. Imagine — a successful journalist who was portrayed by Oliver Platt in a Broadway play doesn’t think he’s hot? Maybe the Oliver Platt thing gave it away. Regardless, Zelnick, along with many other professors at Boston University, is worried about his hotness not because he’s looked in the mirror lately, but because he does not have a shriveled little chili pepper next to his name on RateMyProfessors.com.

I have my issues with RateMyProfessors.com. There are three ways to rate a professor’s likability: with a blue face, green face or yellow face. The yellow goes to the professor who has daisies sprouting from his footsteps and a small parade of dewy-eyed forest animals following in his path. The green face, boasting an uninterested horizontal line for a mouth, indicates that the professor provokes no emotion and, in your boredom, you just become nauseous. The blue is only given to those professors whose presence fill classrooms with sadness and hate. When you see this professor you know that somewhere, a small dog has just died.

To me, this coloring system is not politically correct. Since when is the world racist with emoticons? Not all green people have horizontal mouths and not all blue people are sad. Why is blue the international symbol for depression? Blue is the color of our sky, our oceans and Hypnotiq. With the exception of that disgusting drink, when things are blue it’s usually a good sign.

The final irrelevant way to judge a professor’s teaching skills is the chili. A chili means this professor is physically appealing. Chilies are tiny, shriveled Mexican fruits that taste like burning leaves, and I am not attracted to them. I don’t think chilies are even from the earth; Tums probably invented them so they could get more business. If my professor really was hot enough to deserve a symbol that labeled him so, I’d much prefer to give an image of Brad Pitt. It doesn’t matter if the professor is male or female. I’d give it to all sexes because the more I get to look at Brad Pitt, the more credibility I give the website’s ratings.

I find it unethical that we even give our professors chilies. Being hot doesn’t mean a professor will give you an A, nor does it mean the class is good. Are we really so shallow that we will take a class because the professor is hot? Just because a potential student-teacher relationship would be legal now doesn’t mean that we can go around peddling ourselves as sex-starved students in search of a torrid affair with a wiser, more experienced professor. It does sound exciting, though. And I can’t say I haven’t thought about it.  

But how do we know there aren’t professors out there giving themselves chilies or cruel students giving them as a joke? I ask this because my freshman year I chose classes solely on the chili icon, and three out of four times the chilies were unfounded. Also, RateMyProfessors.com told me Professor Schulman is a woman.

Nevertheless, those chilies are hard to come by, and those without them can end up spiraling into depleted self-confidence.  I think his not having a chili is what caused ex-College of Communication Dean John Schulz to leave and threaten to beat his colleagues with a baseball bat in a dark alley. Could there be any other reason? 

Zelnick asked our class if we would be so kind as to give him a chili. That was a week ago, and still: no Tums fruit present on his web page. I would give him one, but that would kind of be like being depressed and drunkenly kissing one of those greasy-haired boys in an oversized Mets jersey because I feel bad for myself. I can’t just lower myself to that level for him.

I think the professors have been put in a really bad spot. How would you feel if anyone in the cyber world could attach a green face to your Facebook profile as a sign that you’re boring? Professors have to deal with way more criticism than we do, and it’s all anonymous, so they can’t give out Fs to the bad-talkers. On top of that, they have to deal with physical scrutiny, too. Don’t you think we can cut our old professors a break and do away with the chili? Or at least replace it with Brad Pitt, and then I’ll stop complaining.

Sarah Shanfield, a junior in the College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at shansa@bu.edu.