www.csua.org/u/ll5 -> gawker.com/385255/ivy-league-prof-sues-students-for-being-mean-to-her
Priya Venkatesan (Dartmouth '90, MS in Genetics, PhD in literature) emailed members of her Winter '08 Writing 5 class Saturday night to announce her intention to seek damages from them for their being mean to her. I regret to inform you that I am pursuing a lawsuit in which I am accusing some of you (whom shall go unmentioned in this email) of violating Title VII of anti-federal discrimination laws. The feeling that I am getting from the outside world is that Dartmouth is considered a bigoted place, so this may not be news and I may be successful in this lawsuit. I am also writing a book detailing my eperiences as your instructor, which will "name names" so to speak. I have all of your evaluation and these will be reproduced in the book. Students didn't pay attention to her, complained about her to her boss, and accused her of not "accepting opinions contrary to her own" and said she would "lower the grades of students her disagreed with her." In other words, the exact smarmy complaints all entitled college students level against inexperienced teachers.
the Dartmouth News: As an example of Venkatesan's rejection of views different from her own, the student highlighted Venkatesan's cancelation of class for a week after the class applauded a student who contradicted Venkatesan's opinions about post-modernism. Venkatesan said the incident occurred when she was lecturing about "The Death of Nature," a book by Carolyne Merchant, and the witch trials of the Renaissance. The student went on a "diatribe" about the inappropriate nature of challenging patriarchal authority, Venkatesan said. Vakatesan respected the student's right to express this opinion, she said, but the manner in which he vocalized his views and the applause afterward were disrespectful and offensive. "My responsibility is not to stifle them, but when they clapped at his comment, I thought that crossed the line ... I was facing intolerance of ideas and intolerance of freedom of expression."
Ivy League undergrad bitched about hearing some academic nonsense about the entrenched power structures that got them where they are today! From: Priya Venkatesan Sent: Friday, April 25, 2008 Subject: Class Action Suit Dear Student: As a courtesy, you are being notified that you are being named in a potential class action suit that is being brought against Dartmouth College, which is being accused of violating federal anti-discrimination laws. Please do not respond to this email because it will be potentially used against you in a court of law. Priya Venkatesan, PhD From: Priya Venkatesan Sent: Friday, April 25, 2008 Subject: Class Action Suit Dear Student: Please disregard the previous email sent by Priya Venkatesan. This is to officially inform you that you are being accused of violating Title VII pertaining to federal anti-discrimination laws, by the plaintiff, Priya Venkatesan. You are being specifically accused of, but not limited to, harassment. Please do not respond to this email as it will be used against you in a court of law.
statement to Dartblog, Venkatesan reveals that she's retained an attorney from New Hampshire, and that she has absolutely no clue what a class-action suit is or how it works. The students I am naming in this suit were mostly from Winter 08 term with a few from Fall.
This includes not just students, but a few faculty members that I worked with. Possibly on the advice of her lawyer, Venkatesan is now making it more clear that she's suing Dartmouth for harassment by her superior in the writing program, but she won't let go of her brilliant idea to also sue the students who didn't like her very much.
I'd like to sue God for giving me an abusive childhood which left me unequipped to function normally in school and then university and then adult life, but instead I just SUCK IT UP.
On a unrelated note, I will be pursuing a class action suit against Sam Champion and a few other "weather people" for the recent bout of shit weather that began every Friday and rained/snowed through Saturday. Others who have felt put out by this crap weather are also welcome to pursue damages.
You know, Nick, I'm guessing you have most of your legal department devoted to the litigious thetan-cretins of CO$, but you might want to have at least a law intern handy for when this wingnut decides to sue you over her hurt feelings.
Therefore the professor is hypocritcally utilizing the patriarchal power structure to enact violence on those in a lower social caste, ie students being a lower class compared to teachers.
contradicto: It would open the door for some interesting suits. For example can you sue a dead 17th century English executioner for pain and suffering or for just giving you the yips?
By the way, who sends emails to people telling them they are going to be sued? In the litigation support work I have done in the past you send them a sweet pleading.
contradicto: I fail to see how students can discriminate, however. I mean, don't lawsuits involving discrimination involve some sort of statement about how the discrimination in question affected your livelihood? It's not like she was fired because she was a non-white woman, or something--if anything, she's writing a book BECAUSE of these students, thus one could credibly claim that her professional prospects were actually enhanced by the students' actions.
this is one of the reasons that I hate higher education (and I am working toward a PhD). She gets her panties in a bunch because she had students who didn't agree with her. ": It is ok for individuals to disagree in a civilized society. Stop taking it as a personal insult if someone says they don't agree with you. The front of the class is also not a pulpit and you are not in church. She is lucky I was not in her class as I would have made her cry.
"I wrote you a better letter an hour ago but a cat got it!" Seriously,though, students are jerks and crybabies are losers. On a personal note I used to be VERY mean to other students who failed to grasp the utility of political correctness. It was because I adored the Authority the Institution conferred on whatever crackpot queer scheme the Teacher was Paid to Grade me on my comprehension of.
belltolls: Actually , you are right, discrimination is a poor choice of words. Harassment does not always entail that it is done by a superior. And livelihood can be affected in ways that are not financial. That being said, she can't really sue the students, but she can sue the school. Employers are supposed to protect their employees from harassment from the customer, in this case, the customer is the students. But this is all moot since it doesn't seem that these students were in any way harassing her based on sex, or race or whathaveyou. They were "harassing" here because she seems to be one of those snippy, power-hungry, bitch professors who's classes I always dropped.
mackintosh-toffee: Maybe the protected class she belongs to is "crazy people," which would really make this more of an American with Disabilities Act complaint. Although I don't think that "students disagreeing with me" would rise to the level of a violation of the ADA, even under a broadly activist reading of it. Maybe Dartmouth could meet Venkatesan half-way and retrofit classrooms with special ramps and trap doors that would allow her to flee immediately whenever she felt that students were "being mean" to her.
d student who has taught classrooms full of obnoxious, overly-priveleged 18 and 19-year-olds. They can be some seriously rude and disrespectful little fucks when their worldview is questioned.
My interests in graduate school were mainly theoretical, as I textually analyzed certain aspects of scientific communication. However, for me, a question remained: Is there room for literary theory within the framework of the laboratory? She's representative of an annoying trend in "the academy": people who study literary theory and realize that really all the good theorists are already out there and publishing out the ying-yang, so they take their half baked postmodern crit and try to apply it to some new field that has nothing to do with literature. In other words, a cheap stunt t...
|
http://csua.com/feed/