To whom it may concern: 

I would like to make a formal complaint against Professor Renan Levine, for POLC78H3 on behalf of many individuals including myself who are experiencing an extreme amount of  issues within the progression of this course. I have received multiple complaints from other students, as well as from my own experience, that this course is very disorganized. On top of that he has not been very responsive to the email that he has provided for the course. I understand that he is a busy individual, but his lack of responsiveness to emails is absurd for a professor working in a top tier institution like the University of Toronto. 

In addition, in terms of his structure for this course, I feel as though certain issues need to be addressed. For example, the midterm had too many questions for the amount of time that was given. We had to answer 50 multiple choice questions and 3 written responses within 2 hours. Some of the multiple choice questions were incredibly wordy and required more time to think, therefore the time span was too short. Many students felt they did not have enough time to answer all the questions. There was no time to check over any answers at all. He also made it even worse by making the exam an open book format as spending time looking for relevant information to questions, created a scenario where we ran out of time and even failed in certain circumstances given the tremendous amount of questions in the given time period. He also made this format on purpose as he knew giving an open book format would only be a mental illusion for students rather than assisting students at all. This is because there were many questions on the exam which were not covered in course material meaning that there were several occasions on the midterm where we were forced to guess answers. To be clear, if this had been an open book format but with less questions, in an appropriate time period and based on relevant course material as other professors would do, then the concept of telling students its open book would be okay. Many students said they did not finish. This places a huge disadvantage for students, more importantly the high number of students that require this course for their program and must take it reluctantly. 

The course itself is all over the place and extremely disorganized. There are too many assignments and an outrageous number of readings and multiple confusions regarding the due dates as there are times when many things are jumbled up in one week. For example, there was a reading quiz, midterm, discussion board, and article summary due within the time span of just over a week. This was not only a hectic scenario for students but professor Levine himself. He did not upload the article summary which was slated to be due during October 9 on the syllabus and told students that he was busy with things such as American politics and that he would upload them soon and move the due date to somewhere around next week due to his unpunctuality. 

A student in the class was confused about this situation as he did not announce a new official due date for the article summary even though him not posting the article led to the postponement of the due date. This student aimed to politely ask him when the article summary was due. Professor Levine should have politely answered this matter or given some reassurance considering his failure in time management. Instead he proceeded to aggressively tell the student that “this is not the time to ask questions like this and that he needs to cut her off”. This statement can also be viewed in the October 5 webinar recording he has posted on the BB collaborate page. This is yet another example where he did not acknowledge his mistake, provide clear accommodation or apologize for his bad punctuality. Instead, he also proceeded to make the student feel traumatized for asking a valid question. This is brutal behavior and should not have taken place under any circumstance especially by a University of Toronto professor. He also showed up to this same lecture 15 minutes late and said that he only had 5 minutes to eat his dinner and he used this as an excuse to not show up on time. Students are paying hundreds of tuition dollars for a course like this and they are receiving excuses like this in return when many of them have given up various other activities which they could do with their time only to be waiting for 15 minutes in silence. 

One student in the class had a valid domestic emergency which caused him to miss a quiz, but professor Levine stated that he would not excuse or give a remake of the quiz considering he said no extensions or make-ups will be available for quizzes on the syllabus. In his emails he said he did this because “it is not worth it for him to accommodate students for quizzes because it has a low weightage”. No matter how much a task is worth, every student has the right to be excused or offered a makeup if they have a valid reason for the offering which I had in this case. A few percentage points can be the difference between a 3.3 and a 3.7 or even getting accepted into graduate programs for many students. Ultimately, not only does this mean he disobeys the syllabus when it comes to his needs and laziness when he fails to post an assignment on time but he also has put concrete points on the syllabus which shows he does not have the will to do his fair share to accommodate students even during times like these. Another example of this is the fact that he has not been present to his office hours numerous times over the course of this semester. This is absolutely unprofessional and it has denied students of gaining assistance that they needed to do well on assignments considering how disorganized the requirements already are. 

When he finally posted article summary 1 which was an assignment, he had posted the reading which was a really long reading and added a quiz to do based on that reading. He made an error in the posting of article B which was clear to all the students who did that article as two of the questions were different from the ones he gave us. He posts all his article summary questions on a document in advance and the ones on the quiz are supposed to be identical to those ones but this was not the case. Even with the error most students did the quiz anyways considering the due date was nearing and he did not do anything to fix the error so students were in the hopes that he would accommodate the error by excusing the two questions afterwards or by some other means. Instead he fixed the error the day before and expected all his students (even the ones who already handed it in which was the majority of students) to make another submission. It was extremely unfair of him to expect us to not only do all the multiple choice over again but also type out our long written answers too as this would take everyone at least half an hour to an hour in general all because of his careless error. He could have easily fixed this error by proof reading but not only did he commit the error, he also did not acknowledge it or provide accommodation in even nearly an acceptable form or apologize.

His Quercus is also very unorganized and hard to follow. There are assignments and readings everywhere. There are several discussion board assignments with informal deadlines meaning he posts discussion questions whenever he has the time to do so and does not make an announcement about them or remind students to complete them. This results in more than half the class being unable to complete these assignments. 

For POLC92 another one of the classes he teaches, there was an assignment due on Oct 26, however it wasn’t until 4 days before the assignment was due that he sent the students a message on Quercus saying that a student reminded him that there was an assignment due on Oct 26. It was that day on October 22nd that he uploaded the assignment outline which was due 4 days from that day.

The situation has become intolerable. The professor has mismanaged the course and the students are being harshly punished for it by having a poor quality of education forced upon them especially with tough times like these. The situation is completely unfair, and a violation of the trust and contract between the students and the University of Toronto. 

We believe it’s important that changes be made as this is an important issue, not only for my current class, but also for future classes under his care in the future. No student of the University of Toronto should have to go through this experience and stress due to a professor's failure to maintain professionalism. Marks are important to students. Some of us need to get into post grad schools and so this course in the lack of organization and structure, and making us get poor marks through the exams brings down our GPA, making it harder to get into these programs. When we talk about “mental health” about students who go to University of Toronto, this is what we mean. Professor Renan Levine has been getting away with this sort of disorganization and unpunctuality for years especially during the last summer session and this session after courses went fully online. We recommend that action be taken as soon as possible as we will not tolerate this type of behavior and carelessness going forward.

Students demand the following

- Assignments in POLC78 are reduced and that all of them have clear deadlines going forward 

- The final exam of POLC78 should have a fair format which is negotiated with the students

- If possible, Professor Levine to be relieved of his duties in POLC78 in favor of another professor who can provide better management in this course

- A professor to be present during all office hours and on time for all lectures