A newly launched, student-created Web site is dedicated to becoming the most current, reliable source for University professor ratings, course discussions and reviews of local businesses.Joshua Duke, business management and construction management senior, created and designed the site, appropriately called EverythingLSU.com. His goal is to fill the niche held by other sites like University Tools which he said are no longer frequently updated.”A few years ago, University Tools was useful, but it gets more outdated each year,” Duke said. “I might have five or six professors and only be able to find one or two of them [on University Tools].”EverythingLSU features a message board for every course offered at the University, as well as course and professor ratings, and reviews of local bars, restaurants and boutiques are coming soon. Duke said the message boards are the main focus of the site.”I wanted message boards to be a way for people to connect in their classes,” Duke said. “If they need a tutor, they can get a tutor. If they don’t understand something that is discussed, they can get help on the problem.”Brian Simpson, physics senior, said the site is promising but because it is so new, there aren’t enough users yet to reach the site’s full capacity for use.”The point is to be able to share and discuss your class, but this won’t work unless other people in your class actually use the Web site,” Simpson said. ”Professors have a hard time persuading some students to even come to class, so we’ll see. I plan on checking the site regularly to see if it is catching on.”Duke said the site is growing by the day and had 1,400 visitors within four days of launching.Chemical engineering junior Allison Belgard said she will use the site for the course and professor ratings. She has already read reviews posted to the site and plans to submit some of her own.Belgard said she likes the “organized and comprehensive” quality of the site, but is concerned with one factor of the reviews.”The only problem I see is that you have to log in to leave reviews,” Belgard said. “People might be afraid to leave bad reviews since it isn’t anonymous.”Duke said one way students could use course message boards is to exchange notes with one another. Sites created for that purpose, like NoteSwap, have come under fire from professors who don’t want their class materials posted online. But Duke said the way notes would be exchanged distinguishes his site from NoteSwap.Rather than posting notes to the EverythingLSU site, Duke said users should get connected using the message boards and exchange notes privately via e-mail. That way, no notes will be hosted by Duke’s site.Katie McGee Barras, assistant dean of students and associate director of student advocacy and accountability, said the primary issue when sharing notes is who created the material.”If you’re talking about notes a faculty member created, you can’t share that,” McGee Barras said. “The intellectual property belongs to the faculty member, not the student. Student-generated notes … you can post those all day long.”McGee Barras said students should always consult their professor before posting class material online. She also recommended EverythingLSU post a disclaimer about how the site is meant to be used and make visitors aware of academic guidelines.—-Contact Ryan Buxton at [email protected]