Legal Commentary

I know that it is almost never professional nor wise to listen to student complaints about my colleagues. Yet students often want to tell me, indeed seem compelled to tell me, how bad a teacher Professor X is or what a terrible thing Professor Y said in class.  The conversation always has a flattering subtext, to wit, "you're not like Professor X nor Professor Y."  The question, then, is how to divert the conversation to a different topic without making the student feel uncomfortable.  Though I love a good bit of gossip as well as (and maybe better than) the next person, it is simply not a good idea to indulge in this kind of conversation.  I sometimes try to counteract the criticism by pointing out how much my colleague knows about his/her subject matter or how much my colleague really does care about students. Other times, I will say "I can't speak about my colleague" or I will literally stick my fingers in my ears and say "la, la, la" loudly to indicate, in a light-hearted manner, that I cannot be party to that kind of conversation.  Are there any better tricks to deal with this problem?  Over time, I inevitably end up hearing things about my colleagues, and, although I am highly skeptical of individual stories taken out of context, I have formed opinions about the teaching abilities of my colleagues based on hearing the same kinds of criticisms from students over and over again over a sustained period of time. Unfair, or inevitable?