A few commenters and tipsters have been asking about the whereabouts of CULPA, which has seemingly vanished from the internet. Bwog emailed CULPA man-in-charge Seth Berliner who explained that "CULPA is down while we move the site to a new (and more reliable) server, which will allow us to make some upgrades over the summer. We apologize to our loyal readers for the inconvenience; hopefully the new server and the summer improvements will prevent this sort of thing in the future."

So there you have it.

While some of us are still recovering from the first half of this semester, many of our more motivated, forward-thinking peers are already thinking about their fall classes (I know, I know). Hard to believe, but the course directory has already been updated with next year's courses.

Problem is, as many tipsters and readers have noticed, CULPA seems to be down. And without CULPA, there's simply no way to tell the easiest way to fulfill your major cultures or math requirement. (Although, regarding the latter: it's Intro. to Symbolic Logic). Anyway, the reason for CULPA's flaky existence may be the site's lack of a webmaster. In August 2007, CULPA announced that they would be looking for a new webmaster, as the old one had graduated the previous May. A tech-savvy tipster informs Bwog that it is his understanding that CULPA never found its webmaster, which explains why the site's been down.

Bwog emailed Seth Berliner, the CC' 08er in charge of CULPA, who explained that he isn't sure what's causing CULPA's blankness. "Though I can tell you that it's blank for me when I login to the site. Also, we periodically have experienced technical problems this year, most of them related to an upgrade of our server, I believe."

Berliner explains that the CULPA team is working together to pinpoint what's causing the blankness. Bwog will update with further developments.

To those who have e-mailed and commented in panic over the apparent disappearance of CULPA: please calm down. The relevant authorities have been rousted from their sleepy summer reveries, and are checking into the problem.

Besides, it really is still the first week of August.

UPDATE, 8/7, 12:15 AM EST: We've been notified that the site is back up and running.

A friend of a Bwog staffer recently attempted to check out a professor on www.culpa.org.

The professor--Robert Thurman--was not on the site.

At last night's CCSC meeting, a proposal to work towards a centralized course evaluation system was passed unanimously. Academic Affairs Representative Alidad Damooei '09, who co-wrote the proposal with Class of 2008 President Neda Navab, has been meeting with the Office of the Vice President for Arts and Sciences to come up with a uniform set of questions (ideally five or six) that can be published in an easy accessible format, similar to that of SEAS or other Ivy League schools. CCSC now plans to work with the Vice President for Arts and Sciences, Ann McDermott (with whom Damooei has been meeting recently) to come up with such a system, and to test questions through small focus groups.

If the system gets off the ground, only time will tell if any of the "official" published evaluations will ever assume the delightfully vulgar tone of moral outrage that the best negative CULPA reviews have to offer.

Classes have begun, and you're eager to know what your instructors have in store beyond that cute introductory slide lecture. CULPA expert Owain Evans is here to help, writing Bwog to point out what he thought was a suspicious evaluation. "Was this review written by the grad student himself?" he wonders. Bwog can't say, but this excerpt was at least somewhat of an outlier among reviews that were vaguely positive but tended to include such tips as "if you put time into this class you can do well but expect to fail the midterms" and "he thinks it is amusing when the majority of the class fails an exam".

John Baldwin
Mathematics
displaying all reviews (5) | search directory of classes | review prof

Calculus I
27 December 2006

John is a young research mathematician who can check caller ID while
summing Reimann subintervals. His star quality arouses nubile
tittering in the first few rows, then narrowly offset with strategic
downplay. John plants errors in his boardwork to weed out the
booksmarts, so if you're thinking of getting some in-class doodling
done, think again! Test questions are mildly sadistic, though John
will provide ample crawl opps for those who care enough to botch the
exams. Moreover, since John's not a generalist, he won't offer answers
to questions you can figure on your own. But if you have inquiries
which demonstrate genuine intellectual curiosity, John will be
generous with his time and brain power- count on that! Office hours
are busy and often run seminar style, so get in on it early or you
just might miss him.

Workload: Don't think you're off the hook as far as homework goes!
Easier problems are culled from the actual assignments, which do have
collaborative appeal...so split up the sets in your study group and
share the answers! Unless you're feeling rigorous, well, then there's
just no getting around hard work.

Edmund Phelps is having a good week. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics, he has a classy/awesome sounding job title (McVickar Professor of Political Science), and his choice of the Full Windsor proves that his neckwear shall always be as dignified as his demeanor. But can he teach?

Well...four out of six CULPA reviewers say no, with one going so far as to say that Phelps is "by far the worst lecturer I've had at Columbia." What's more, one of the two who did speak up on his behalf called him "ingaging"—not the most convincing "indorsement." Bwog, however, will refrain from judgment until we have taken Prof. Phelps' class, which, indeed, we have not. For now, we'll let the CULPA reviews—and the Nobel Prize Committee—speak for themselves.

Bwog found this review while browsing classes on CULPA, and was shocked to discover that the class discussed actually exists. Shocked, and envious of the lucky six who enrolled.

"On the first day you realize that this class is not a normal Columbia seminar. The class is broken up into two watches, and each student is given a rank—depending on his or her maritime knowledge and experience. Prof. McCaughey becomes the Captain."

Complete text of the review, with class description, after the jump...

You've heard about CULPA. It's been recommended by most of the many people who give you advice. But like Wikipedia, the underground listing has its flaws, and shouldn't be your only source of information. Here's Bwog academic advisor Owain Evans on how to get the most out of CULPA—as a source of entertainment, if nothing else.

Watch your sample size. If a professor has lots of well-written reviews that are all positive or all negative, then you're safe assuming that she's either really good or really bad. However, such unanimity (and consistently well-constructed reviews) is rare. Without it, be wary of drawing strong conclusions.

The Slacker Factor. There are lots of malicious or misinformed reviews on the site, and it's impossible to verify whether a review is accurate or not. Remember, lots of people in your classes don't do the reading and are on the verge of falling asleep half the time. The reviews that such people write are unlikely to be of much use unless you also plan to avoid the reading and somnambulate to class. Also, many reviews are mere expressions of personal animus--even some of the well-written and detailed ones. The 'user feedback' feature can be useful in this regard, provided lots of people have voted on the accuracy of the review.

Ask the experts. Make sure to check reviews of the more advanced classes a professor has taught, even if you're thinking about an intro. Students in low-level classes are often ignorant of the subject being taught, leading to misinformed reviews. For example: "The prof kept going on about 'proofs' the whole time. He didn't give us any calculations to do!" (This is actually what university math is like). Or, "The whole class was just about hair-splitting distinctions and we never got anywhere" (This is actually what philosophy is like). People who do advanced undergrad classes will tend to know the subject well enough to offer a balanced review.

The following picture and caption ran on the front page of today's Spec next to the article "Professors Scoff at CULPA":

Well, we know Prof. Moyn. Prof. Moyn is a friend of ours. And that, sir, is no Prof. Moyn. This is Prof. Moyn's picture on the History Department website:

So who is the man in the picture? Why, it's Professor Michael Golston:

We'd only add that all of this confusion could have been avoided by a look at our old friend The Facebook, where Prof. Golston has a fan club and Prof. Moyn has his very own profile as well as a group he started, Merleau-Ponty Rules!, to which we can only respond: yes, yes he does.