Colleagues:
     I have followed with interest the discussion about "legal reasoning"
and can agree with those who opine about student desire for "certainty",
hatred of the unknown, and punitive measures often and perversely being
visited against those faculty who make students think.  Ironically,
employers complain about students' lack of analytical skills, but those who
try to inject them into their courses end up being downgraded in teacher
evaluations.
     To me the answer is provided by using some sort of outside supplement
to student evaluations which currently have too much weight in the teacher
evaluation process.  If one gives objective exams, which may well be the
case given the heavy student loads at some schools, one might want to use
statistical measures (difficulty index, Spearman-Brown coefficient,
conformity to "ideal" exam discrimination profiles, and "N" the number of
students taught) to augment student "preferences."  While not perfect,
statistical measures can add a dimension to teacher evaluations (evidence of
rigor) presently marginalized and encourage faculty to be more creative and
engaging in their pedagogy.
                                               Bruce Fisher