Can I lose my job over writing a negative comment on (anonymous) faculty evaluation of institution? I'm faculty and I work at a place that does faculty evaluations of our institution. I wrote a pretty harsh, but true comment on the back. While it's supposed to be anonymous, I'm still afraid it could be traced back to me. I know, it was a dumb move, but it didn't occur to me that writing the comment would be. Do you think I will lose my job over it? Maybe another dumb question, but I'm stressing right now.
The true anonymity of "anonymous evaluations" is a key issue (in academia and also in the workplace).  If you say an evaluation is anonymous, can you later take them to task for something they wrote that you regard as problematic?

This happened at my university a few years back.  Student course evaluations are done electronically now, and they are said to be anonymous.  However, one student "contributed" an anonymous evaluation which criticized their instructor for their sexual orientation.  The university IT staff got involved, did in fact trace the evaluation back to the student, and the student was prosecuted for it.  In particular, IIRC their name was made public (I read about this in the university paper!) and they may have had to write a letter of apology.

This is a good problem for an ethics class: should the university have done this?  After reflecting about it for a while, my feeling is that the university did behave unethically: not by tracking down a comment that violates rules of university conduct (not to mention the rules and conventions of civilized society about treatment of minority), but by not being open with the students that the anonymity in the evaluations was meant as a policy decision, not a factual description of the way the technology is implemented.  They could have designed the system so that university IT staff would have no way -- or at least, no standard, built-in way-- of tracking it back to its origin.

Anyway: yes, it is probably technically possible that the evaluation can be traced back to you.  The moral of the above story is that unless you specifically know and trust the mechanisms that prevent that, you should regard the anonymity as being at the level of policy -- i.e., you are honorbound not to act on the knowledge of the identity -- rather than a true lack of knowledge of the writer's identity.

As for the rest, you ask:


  Do you think I will lose my job over it? Maybe another dumb question, but I'm stressing right now.


That doesn't sound like a dumb question for you.  However, in my opinion it's  "a dumb question" (rather, an unfruitful one) to ask us.  We don't know:


Who you are, and what are the conditions of your employment.
Where you work, and who your colleagues are.
What you wrote.


Without this information, our best guess at the answer is nowhere near as good as yours.  I understand that because of your closeness to the situation and reasonable anxiety, it may be hard for you to view objectively.  I suggest that you confide in someone you can trust and who is closer to the situation.



@Trevor Wilson asked:


  Was it this case: nytimes.com/2008/01/20/magazine/20wwln-ethicist-t.html ? If so, it sounds like the evaluation was handwritten. 


Nice find!  I checked it out a bit, and...I think it is likely that this is the same case, and that it was long enough ago (longer than I thought) that I am not quite remembering the particulars.  It is also interesting that this made "Ask an Ethicist"...and the Ethicist said very much what I said above.  Adding to the irony,  I suppose I am now criticizing my university a bit by weighing in on this.  I think they can take it.