He never said a piece was bad, trite, self serving or any other negative. That doesn't mean that everything was praised and held up as an exemplary example of superb writing. He was there to teach, not destroy. Every author, and those actors who occasionally contributed work, left the class eager to work on something new for the next session. My young friend, after leaving his class at the University, found himself blocked and fearful to put words onto the paper again.
Some people consider the professor's style of teaching viable.
They think it prepares a writer for the rejections that will inevitably happen in their career. I think you don't need to get a third degree burn to know when fire is hot. The young man says that he did learn in the class, but he remained blocked for months and is just now recovering from the experience. In addition, he noticed that those people who emulated the teacher's idea of what was good or right are the ones that received the most attention. In Doric Wilson's class twenty students came in with twenty different rough voices and left with twenty different better voices.