Putting the “Class” in Class Action. Also, the “Ligitious and Passive-Aggressive Book-Peddler” in Professor.
The D reported yesterday on lecturer Priya Venkatesan (also undergrad ‘90 and a Med School researcher) who, in a series of strangely passive-aggressive group emails, announced a plan to sue her students for workplace harassment based on “intolerance of ideas.” The emails-reported first in Dartlog and forwarded to a zillion email lists within seconds-also contain info on Venkatesan’s upcoming Academy X rip-off where she plans to “name names.” Venkatesan tapped into the email list from her Winter 2008 Writing 5 class:
Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:56:35
From: Priya Venkatesan
Subject: WRIT.005.17.18-WI08: Possible lawsuitDear former class members of Science, Technology and Society:
I tried to send an email through my server but got undelivered messages. 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.
Have a nice day.
The phrase “anti-federal discrimination laws” made me think she was emailing drunk; follow-up messages and press statements indicate that Venkatesan is, in fact, serious.
Few of Venkatesan’s students deny disliking her; they just say it had nothing to do with race, gender, or any other federally-protected characteristic. Rather, the lecturer embodied that special brand of neurotic pedagogical tyranny that includes making rules against questions, refusing to interact with students, and, according to the D,
cancelation of class for a week after the class applauded a student who contradicted Venkatesan’s opinions about post-modernism
Spontaneous applause during a class on literary criticism? Obviously, there is something very wrong with this picture, so outrageously shocking as to shake Venkatesan to her very core: In a class at an Ivy League university, students were paying attention. Worse: They were engaged, and they cared.
“I was horrified,” Venkatesan said. “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.” …She canceled class because the incident caused her “intellectual and emotional distress,” she said.
Then again, being outsmarted by a room full of eighteen-year-olds must be pretty humiliating. A kinder choice would have been emitting a spontaneous snore or two, then preoccupying themselves with a more innocuous form of disrespect, like text messaging during class or ostentatious yawning.
Possibly awesome turn of logic: If the students’ crime was “intolerance of ideas,” and the idea in question was post-modernism, does that mean post-modernism is Venkatesan’s religion? In which case academia has finally curled so far inward as to truly out-po-mo itself. “Where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain,” indeed!
After the jump: More emails from Venkatesan and Dartmouth authorities, and a sample of Venkatesan’s evaluations.
The objects of Ventakesan’s suit received two more emails, both of which were also sent to “editor@dartmoth.com,” probably a mixed-up attempt to get a hold of the D, whose editors occupy “editor@thedartmouth.com.” It is still unknown how Venkatesan chose these students; student evaluations are, in theory, anonymous.
From: Priya Venkatesan
Sent: Friday, April 25, 2008
Subject: Class Action SuitDear 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 SuitDear 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.
Priya Venkatesan, PhD
Shortly thereafter, members of Venkatesan’s writing course received support from freshmen dean Gail Zimmerman:
Dear Students,
It has come to my attention that many of you have been receiving emails from Prof. Priya Venkatesan as a former student in one of her Writ 5 courses. I understand that these emails have been rather distressing for you.
So that you can be informed of how the College is proceeding in response to these and to understand your own concerns, I and Tom Cormen, Director of the Writing Program, will meet with you today, Sunday, April 27 at 12:30 p.m. in Parkhurst Hall, Room 9B (located in the basement of Parkhurst). Robert Donin from legal counsel will also be joining us.
If you are unable to make this meeting, I am happy to meet with you at a later time.
Regards,
Dean Zimmerman
**********************
Gail M. Zimmerman, Ed. D.
Dean of First-Year Students
Dartmouth College
The content of the above meeting is as yet unknown, though we assume it went something like this: “Don’t worry, kids. Though the word ‘class’ is in both ‘class-action’ and ‘class list,’ your teacher can’t actually sue you for being smarter than she is. We’ll just sic that well-oiled machine of right-wing Dartian blowhards on her, and this whole thing will resolve itself.”
Speaking of right-wing Dartians, Venkatesan wrote in to Dartlog to explain she is “not bitter at all about teaching evaluations,” because she is not a teacher at all, but a research-minded lab rat now employed at some “undisclosed” institution that is even better than Dartmouth, so she doesn’t even need you guys anyway, so there! Let us pray to the gods of tabloid fodder that this “undisclosed” employer doesn’t actually exist, and Venkatesan is in truth living in a Super 8 Motel outside of Hanover, biding her time until this book deal comes through. Which would probably make the deal even sweeter, as fake memoirs from delusional paranoiacs are all the rage of late.
Was she really so bad? Let’s shake the tip jar and see what falls out…
Venkatesan taught two sections of Writing 5, a course mandatory for all Dartmouth students who don’t make some cutoff point on the SATs. Her Writing 5 course was apparently offered in two terms – Fall and Winter – and was something to do with science. My friend in the Fall07 course told me she was a ridiculous teacher – she assigned a bunch of readings about postmodernism, but three weeks into the term, nobody in the class could explain what postmodernism was.
Yeah, but who can explain what postmodernism is? Casualty of the field, really.
Last we checked, Venkatesan’s course had fourteen reviews on the Dartmouth Student Assembly’s student evaluations website, under the following titles:
- Worst teacher I have ever had – Written by a 2011
- Interesting – Written by a 2011
- WORST PROFESSOR EVER DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS – Written by a 2011
- save yourself now – Written by a 2011
- a tad ridiculous – Written by a 2011
- Interesting Material but Prof. is hard to follow – Written by a 2011
- Terrible class, terrible prof – Written by a 2011
- Interesting Material, Bad Prof. – Written by a 2011
- If she teaches here… – Written by a 2011
- WORST CLASS EVER – Written by a 2011
- interesting topic, boring prof – Written by a 2011
- Do NOT take this course – Written by a 2011
- HORRIBLE – Written by a 2011
- insecurity, ego, and more – Written by a 2011
Excerpts from the above evals:
Professor Venkatesan refuses to answer questions, does not respond to questions, and lectures by reading off her notes in front of her. She did not make me a better writer, she did not explain the concepts well, but she did manage to make my life a living hell.
She offered no help in class or in office hours for papers. When handed a hard copy she read the paper, said it was great, but then gave terrible grades to many students. Later on she began refusing to grade papers and gave the reason that judging by our peer editing abilities we didn’t need her help on papers. She missed/cancelled 5 or 6 classes and as a result the syllabus was squished into 3 weeks and she changed the final project about 4 times. A TERRIBLE CLASS.
In terms of who will be most damaged by this ordeal, Venkatesan’s students are mostly out of the question, since wisecracking a flustered professor isn’t illegal, nor are negative course evals. (Though, yeah, it must suck to have a profession that requires listening to our gripes, and we extend honest apologies to every teacher who has been forced to deal with us.) No, the real race-to-the-bottom will be between Venkatesan and Dartmouth’s writing program: Is she the villain, for dealing with her inability to teach by sending smugly gloating emails about “naming names” and civil law? Or is Dartmouth, for hiring this litigious trainwreck in the first place, and inflicting her on innocent freshmen?
Finally: Is it possible to get Venkatesan in a room with Madonna Constantine for a tell-all damn-the-man gab-fest? Cookies and tea at my place, ladies.
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April 29th, 2008 at 12:24 am
So… one question left unanswered after all that juicy detail… why in the world aren’t Dartmouthian course evals anonymous?
April 29th, 2008 at 12:25 am
IvyGate is pretty much as postmodern as you can get.
Serves Dartmouth right for constantly bragging about how awesome their undergraduate education is. Let’s be honest, nobody in academia is immune from this type of teaching. Not at Wright State, not at Princeton.
April 29th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Evaluations ARE anonymous. She’s basically naming names based on behavior in class. Aside from that, many students complained to their deans about her. If she REALLY wanted to make people’s lives difficult (which it is apparent she does) she could possibly have asked the director of the writing department which deans complained about her and possibly tracked the students down from that. Regardless of how she’s naming names, I say good riddance! Dartmouth seriously doesn’t need her. She claims to have left voluntarily, but we suspect she only did so when she came to realize she was in serious danger of being reprimanded by the college in some way and decided to take her revenge out on her former students. I feel sorry for whoever got stuck with her next.
April 29th, 2008 at 12:44 am
Dartmouth course reviews are supposed to be anonymous – either the Student Assembly or the administration really messed up, or Venkatesan is talking nonsense. Most people here think she just randomly picked students she didn’t like to sue.
Also Cayuga, anyone who claims Dartmouth’s immune from this foolishness is silly – that’s like saying a democracy is immune from abuses of power or tyrants. Of course not. The point is that a democracy has more safeguards against tyranny, and Dartmouth’s focus on undergrads provide greater safeguards against this kind of teaching. You can argue that Dartmouth’s let down this kind of tradition in previous years – that is the crux of the alumni issue, some claim – but regardless, Dartmouth isn’t supposed to be completely lacking in horrid profs. It is supposed to have on the whole good profs, and I’d say it succeeds at that.
April 29th, 2008 at 1:17 am
@johnleemk:
This is true. There are bad profs, but they are few and far between. I would say at Dartmouth I’ve had only one truly bad prof out of 25 or so, and by bad I mean one where the professor’s methods actually prevented me from doing well in the class. I’d say that’s a pretty good rate.
April 29th, 2008 at 8:02 am
Those reviews are from Student Assembly, where people who took the class can post unofficial reviews for other students. There wasn’t a security breach.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:54 am
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=224976
Pasadena City College
April 29th, 2008 at 10:58 am
SUpposedly, the prof at “rate my professors” is not the same one.
Does anyone know what the College’s legal counsel told the threatened students on Sunday? There was a sit-down discussion of sorts.
April 29th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
As I mentioned in a previous thread, I believe she is now at Northwestern (and not the same person as the Pasadena C.C. prof).
April 29th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
regardless of how classy she is she shouldn’t be suing her students.
April 29th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
The photo is copyrighted, you should really consider removing it. Trust me, that’s the only way Dartlog and Dartblog would agree to take it down when they were asked. @Cayuga, you’re obviously an idiot.
April 29th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Photo of aforementioned course evaluation website (obviously not for Venkatesan’s course):
http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/4919/courseevalld8.png
April 29th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
obviously this women is batshit insane/bipolar.
poor thing.
April 29th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
classy.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
she sounds almost as bad as professor mollett, a new geography hire last year.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
We’ve definitely had worse here. But unfortunately for Dartmouth, it never really gets made so public.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
come on little ’11s, please tell us what happened in that meeting!
April 29th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
lawsuit plans dropped
http://dartlog.net/2008/04/venkatesan-drops-lawsuit-plans.php
April 29th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
As mentioned above, she is at Northwestern working as a research associate (http://tinyurl.com/5gbu6c). I did not have the misfortune of seeing her teaching skills firsthand, but I can attest to her complete lack of common sense and technical ability in a research setting.
It is interesting that she managed to acquire a MS in genetics from UC Davis. My guess, total speculation, is that her goal was a PhD and she never made it past her qualifying exam.
April 29th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Wow… I am glad I dropped this class, even though it meant taking writing 5 as a junior…
April 29th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Actually according to an update at the same link, she changed her mind (again) and will still be suing the College…
April 29th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
You probably are correct — sort of. People think you ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ quals; you don’t. The decision involves so many other variables: does the student have interesting ideas, was their score an aberration, and does anybody want to work with the student. (I’m gonna guess ‘hell no’ for the last question.)
April 29th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Can you say Affirmative Action hire? My cousin, who is white, has a PhD in English and was in competition with an Indian woman for a faculty position. My cousin was told to her face that the Indian woman would make the faculty more “diverse” and so, because she was white, it was not possible to offer her a tenure track position at that time. They offered to let her keep teaching and to “try again” but she told them to get lost. The woman she was passed over for quit the next year. Interestingly, my cousin is a typical far-left academic and this experience did nothing to change her views on “diversity”.
April 29th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Can you say Affirmative Action hire? My cousin, who is white, has a PhD in English and was in competition with an Indian woman for a faculty position. My cousin was told to her face that the Indian woman would make the faculty more “diverse” and so, because she was white, it was not possible to offer her a tenure track position at that time. They offered to let her keep teaching and to “try again” but she told them to get lost. The woman she was passed over for quit the next year. Interestingly, my cousin is a typical far-left academic and this experience did nothing to change her views on “diversity”.
April 29th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Oops, sorry about the double post.
April 30th, 2008 at 12:24 am
Unlikely that anyone in their right mind would actually tell her that she was not hired because of her race. That’s illegal and the institution would be opening itself up to a big fat lawsuit.
April 30th, 2008 at 12:31 am
Big fat juicy lawsuit, but that somehow, curiously, in the we-can-put-a-man-on-the-moon-but-no-one-knows-why kinda way, affirmative action always rears its ugly (and easy) head. Hiring committees will often tell white candidates that AA is to blame, when in reality they don’t want to hire them, for whatever reason. It’s a convenient way out. We don’t need to go here: Venkatesan was a bad hire, and is clearly a nut case. Case closed. Not the first time a bad professor has taught the talented tenth LOL
April 30th, 2008 at 1:27 am
The professor needs to learn that class action suit doesn’t mean a suit against the members of the class that you teach.
The question for Dartmouth is whether they have to pay for a lawyer for each of the kids being sued. They just might. If the dean is going to tell them that Dartmouth’s lawyer is going to protect them, there could be trouble down the line.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:46 am
I think Venkatesan is the only person who even expects the “case” to make it past the judge’s desk.
April 30th, 2008 at 5:11 am
The real culprit here is ultimately the hiring process. How did a plainly imbalanced person like this professor manage to get hired in the first place? And now she’s at Northwestern?
April 30th, 2008 at 7:22 am
A class action suit is needed – by the students. They were charged by an ivy league school for a writing class. Since that class would not meet the reasonable expectations of anyone paying for an ivy league education (obviously), the students should be compensated.
But, I could be wrong. Maybe that class is what passes for an ivy league education these days.
April 30th, 2008 at 10:34 am
She’s at Northwestern? Hmm. Isn’t that where Bernardine Dohrn is at?
April 30th, 2008 at 11:02 am
OK- First of all she was a post-doc at DMS, which is not a faculty appointment. These are not very difficult to get and are short term jobs (2-4 years typically). She was teaching Writing 5 as an instructor (and not through the English Department) and most likely paid a very small amount of money (my guess was she wanted to keep one foot in the literary side while she worked in her PI’s lab). This could not be a diversity issue and those right-wing idealogues should drop their concern with her as it is not germane to this discussion.
April 30th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Someone should point out to the prof that she probably would even have a job if those students weren’t paying to get an education.
If any of today’s college students ever considered the fact that their professors are working because the STUDENTS are paying to go to school, maybe we’d be able to hear less about all these lefty professors spewing out their socialist views on these kids.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Not to follow that tangent or give the opposition fodder (as I support AA) but I was in a situation where I was privy to a certain uptown Manhattan school hiring convo where a whitebread candidate was not hired because several people thought the department should look more like the world. (The convo devolved into “should we reflect the city, the country or the world in our diversity”.) It all seemed like AA had been horribly misinterpreted by otherwise bright people. So there is always a place for Priya Venkatesan somewhere I guess, though hopefully.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
There is a place for her.
Bagging groceries.
It’s a match for her level of competence.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
There is a place for her.
Bagging groceries.
It’s a match for her level of competence.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
The gang of 88 all over again. These profs are garden variety sociopaths (no different from Enron sociopaths, elected official sociopaths ar “living constitution” tyyany” judicial sociopaths. The students need to sue every sociopath out of town. Let the games begin!
April 30th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Yeah, since the admin starting with Friedman and intensified with Wright tried to get Dartmouth to be a ‘research university’ by dismantling the frat/sis houses and retooling D’s mission, two things happened: a) class size grew enormously and b) they hired plenty of visiting douches with no stake in the College like this nutcase Prya. A while back, a visiting CS prof from NC State tried to entrap like 76 students for plagiarism because he felt disrespected by D students who rightly rejected his poor teaching. http://tinyurl.com/5bpt55
April 30th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
I was in the class. She’s nothing but a lazy ass, trust me. These bullshit profs have way too much protection from the real world. Their “areas of study” are such fluff.
May 1st, 2008 at 3:27 pm
OK. Where was this person’s department chair and dean in all this? Clearly something was amiss in this class, either with the professor or the students or both, early on in semester, but no one was doing anything about it? One would think someone, if only a faculty adviser asking a student how the semester was going, would be aware of this and do something. Not placing blame on anyone but that seems to be the unanswered question in this story.
May 1st, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Tragicomic. School should never have hired her; certainly it should have had better/faster-cycle oversight of her pedagogical trainwreck. Maybe the class should have dropped a dime on her sooner, but it’s not their job, particularly since they’re new arrivals (“Dude! Is this how it’s gonna be, all our courses for next four years?!?”). But apart from the ding to our brand from “do you believe this one?” publicity, the so-called “lawsuit”isn’t going anywhere. If I were a judge and this hit my desk, I’d call her lawyer in and this hit my docket, I’d dismiss with prejudice, costs to the defendant, and sanction the lawyer who brought it.
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:34 am
Judging from her emails, this human has no business teaching writing and no grasp of post modern critical theory, discrimination, America, law, pedagogy or language. Who hired her? Why? What was she paid? find that person and dismiss him or her.
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:35 am
Judging from her emails, this human has no business teaching writing and no grasp of post modern critical theory, discrimination, America, law, pedagogy or language. Who hired her? Why? What was she paid? Find that person and dismiss him or her.
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:37 am
Judging from her emails, this human has no business teaching writing and no grasp of post modern critical theory, discrimination, America, law, pedagogy or language. Who hired her? Why? What was she paid? Find that person and dismiss him or her.
May 3rd, 2008 at 11:47 pm
I graduated from Dartmouth in the 1970s and my son is in the class of 2009. Fortunately he aced out of the writing requirement. I am currently paying more than $10,500 tuition per term, each term consisting of three courses. If I found out after the fact that I had paid in excess of $3500 to have this travesty — this caricature — of an education inflicted on my son, Dartmouth would be hearing from me. I certainly hope Dartmouth is hearing from the parents of the unfortunate students of this “professor.” This is an outrage on several levels.
May 3rd, 2008 at 11:52 pm
I graduated from Dartmouth in the 1970s and my son is in the class of 2009. Fortunately he aced out of the writing requirement. I am currently paying more than $10,500 tuition per term, each term consisting of three courses. If I found out after the fact that I had paid in excess of $3500 to have this travesty — this caricature — of an education inflicted on my son, Dartmouth would be hearing from me. I certainly hope Dartmouth is hearing from the parents of the unfortunate students of this “professor.” This is an outrage on several levels.
May 4th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
To compare literary structures to the DNA code is an exercise in ignorance
and obfuscation. James and other litcrits such as Priya here certainly
suffer from an inferiority complex w.r.t. science. I guess they failed that
subject in school, the same way that Priya failed becoming a scientist.
And Foucault was the guy who embraced the death squad leader Ayatolla
Khomeini as being authentic and fit for ruling a hapless 70 million people.
Foucault was a mass murderer in the intellectual sphere.
Problem with pomo and its defenders is that when they are unable to
understand a systems phenomena, unlike scientists who have their methods of
investigation, they dismiss it as being complex. What they mean is that it
is too complex for them. Not for a scientist versed in math and systems
theory.
This Priya is the best thing that happened after the Sokal hoax. James and
other pomos are cringing.
May 5th, 2008 at 4:49 am
OK, I go to Northwestern (non-trad program), and I had a psych instructor who behaved like HE was nuts (he’d start stuff with you if you weren’t accepting his crackpot Freudian theories). So, I posted up a storm about the incident on some consumer complaint website, just to be a snark, and get this–the dean called me into his office to whine about how they have the option of writing me up under the “civility” code of the student handbook (I complained about multiple FERPA violations, so lots of luck disciplining me for anything, as I’ll totally countersue them for retaliation if they ever do).
This school is run by cranks who, when you call them out on crank behavior, act like total fascists, threatening the student with so-called disciplinary action.
Seriously. I’m not much of a social conservative (more libertarian), but I’m getting a royal kick out of seeing Fox News rip the colleges a new one on the air over all of the radicalism.
Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, I may not always agree with you guys, but do keep this up. After all, regardless of who’s showcasing the outlandish behavior, in the words of one Justice Louis Brandeis, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
Power to the press for covering this (and I shall tell all of the English majors I know to run for cover from this crank).
May 5th, 2008 at 4:51 am
OK, I go to Northwestern (non-trad program), and I had a psych instructor who behaved like HE was nuts (he’d start stuff with you if you weren’t accepting his crackpot Freudian theories). So, I posted up a storm about the incident on some consumer complaint website, just to be a snark, and get this–the dean called me into his office to whine about how they have the option of writing me up under the “civility” code of the student handbook (I complained about multiple FERPA violations, so lots of luck disciplining me for anything, as I’ll totally countersue them for retaliation if they ever do).
This school is run by cranks who, when you call them out on crank behavior, act like total fascists, threatening the student with so-called disciplinary action.
Seriously. I’m not much of a social conservative (more libertarian), but I’m getting a royal kick out of seeing Fox News rip the colleges a new one on the air over all of the radicalism.
Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, I may not always agree with you guys, but do keep this up. After all, regardless of who’s showcasing the outlandish behavior, in the words of one Justice Louis Brandeis, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
Power to the press for covering this (and I shall tell all of the English majors I know to run for cover from this crank).
May 5th, 2008 at 4:52 am
OK, I go to Northwestern (non-trad program), and I had a psych instructor who behaved like HE was nuts (he’d start stuff with you if you weren’t accepting his crackpot Freudian theories). So, I posted up a storm about the incident on some consumer complaint website, just to be a snark, and get this–the dean called me into his office to whine about how they have the option of writing me up under the “civility” code of the student handbook (I complained about multiple FERPA violations, so lots of luck disciplining me for anything, as I’ll totally countersue them for retaliation if they ever do).
This school is run by cranks who, when you call them out on crank behavior, act like total fascists, threatening the student with so-called disciplinary action.
Seriously. I’m not much of a social conservative (more libertarian), but I’m getting a royal kick out of seeing Fox News rip the colleges a new one on the air over all of the radicalism.
Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, I may not always agree with you guys, but do keep this up. After all, regardless of who’s showcasing the outlandish behavior, in the words of one Justice Louis Brandeis, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
Power to the press for covering this (and I shall tell all of the English majors I know to run for cover from this crank).
May 5th, 2008 at 4:54 am
OK, I go to Northwestern (non-trad program), and I had a psych instructor who behaved like HE was nuts (he’d start stuff with you if you weren’t accepting his crackpot Freudian theories). So, I posted up a storm about the incident on some consumer complaint website, just to be a snark, and get this–the dean called me into his office to whine about how they have the option of writing me up under the “civility” code of the student handbook (I complained about multiple FERPA violations, so lots of luck disciplining me for anything, as I’ll totally countersue them for retaliation if they ever do).
This school is run by cranks who, when you call them out on crank behavior, act like total fascists, threatening the student with so-called disciplinary action.
Seriously. I’m not much of a social conservative (more libertarian), but I’m getting a royal kick out of seeing Fox News rip the colleges a new one on the air over all of the radicalism.
Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, I may not always agree with you guys, but do keep this up. After all, regardless of who’s showcasing the outlandish behavior, in the words of one Justice Louis Brandeis, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
Power to the press for covering this (and I shall tell all of the English majors I know to run for cover from this crank).
May 5th, 2008 at 4:58 am
OK, I go to Northwestern (non-trad program), and I had a psych instructor who behaved like HE was nuts (he’d start stuff with you if you weren’t accepting his crackpot Freudian theories). So, I posted up a storm about the incident on some consumer complaint website, just to be a snark, and get this–the dean called me into his office to whine about how they have the option of writing me up under the “civility” code of the student handbook (I complained about multiple FERPA violations, so lots of luck disciplining me for anything, as I’ll totally countersue them for retaliation if they ever do).
This school is run by cranks who, when you call them out on crank behavior, act like total fascists, threatening the student with so-called disciplinary action.
Seriously. I’m not much of a social conservative (more libertarian), but I’m getting a royal kick out of seeing Fox News rip the colleges a new one on the air over all of the radicalism.
Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, I may not always agree with you guys, but do keep this up. After all, regardless of who’s showcasing the outlandish behavior, in the words of one Justice Louis Brandeis, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
Power to the press for covering this (and I shall tell all of the English majors I know to run for cover from this crank).
May 5th, 2008 at 4:59 am
OK, I go to Northwestern (non-trad program), and I had a psych instructor who behaved like HE was nuts (he’d start stuff with you if you weren’t accepting his crackpot Freudian theories). So, I posted up a storm about the incident on some consumer complaint website, just to be a snark, and get this–the dean called me into his office to whine about how they have the option of writing me up under the “civility” code of the student handbook (I complained about multiple FERPA violations, so lots of luck disciplining me for anything, as I’ll totally countersue them for retaliation if they ever do).
This school is run by cranks who, when you call them out on crank behavior, act like total fascists, threatening the student with so-called disciplinary action.
Seriously. I’m not much of a social conservative (more libertarian), but I’m getting a royal kick out of seeing Fox News rip the colleges a new one on the air over all of the radicalism.
Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, I may not always agree with you guys, but do keep this up. After all, regardless of who’s showcasing the outlandish behavior, in the words of one Justice Louis Brandeis, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
Power to the press for covering this (and I shall tell all of the English majors I know to run for cover from this crank).
May 5th, 2008 at 5:01 am
OK, I go to Northwestern (non-trad program), and I had a psych instructor who behaved like HE was nuts (he’d start stuff with you if you weren’t accepting his crackpot Freudian theories). So, I posted up a storm about the incident on some consumer complaint website, just to be a snark, and get this–the dean called me into his office to whine about how they have the option of writing me up under the “civility” code of the student handbook (I complained about multiple FERPA violations, so lots of luck disciplining me for anything, as I’ll totally countersue them for retaliation if they ever do).
This school is run by cranks who, when you call them out on crank behavior, act like total fascists, threatening the student with so-called disciplinary action.
Seriously. I’m not much of a social conservative (more libertarian), but I’m getting a royal kick out of seeing Fox News rip the colleges a new one on the air over all of the radicalism.
Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, I may not always agree with you guys, but do keep this up. After all, regardless of who’s showcasing the outlandish behavior, in the words of one Justice Louis Brandeis, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
Power to the press for covering this (and I shall tell all of the English majors I know to run for cover from this crank).
May 5th, 2008 at 5:03 am
Oope. Massive apologies, but I swear, the server kept conking out, and I didn’t think ANY post actually posted. Pardon me for the multiple post mess.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:41 am
She is a dumber version of rain man.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
this woman has a lot of degrees but no clue about the american legal system. she better get used to the idea of filing her “class action” pro se, because no lawyer would touch it with a 10-foot pole — jesus, she should be fired for stupidity
May 7th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
The word “pompous” describes her well. Plus a bad career choice. What is “postmodernism in laboratory science” anyway?
May 7th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
The word “pompous” describes her well. Plus a bad career choice. What is “postmodernism in laboratory science” anyway?
May 8th, 2008 at 4:40 am
She apparently wrote that “scientific knowledge
has suspect access to truth.”
Well, we kind of knew that! All scientific theories (i.e. knowledge) are suspect, and scientists are supposed to test them by experiment. But the ‘truth’ we’re looking at is the physical universe; why is our access to it ’suspect’? I mean, it’s right here in front of me. Ouch!
She continued: “Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct.”
Dammit! Now I really want to challenge her to define ‘fact’, ‘natural’ and ‘reality’. Is this how her students felt?
May 9th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
How funny, my school (Northwestern) just got her. This should be interesting. Luckily I’m graduating and won’t have to deal with this.
May 11th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Now im jus one of da dum vetrins stefhin king talkd about buh i tink da deen shudda fired da profeser and her mediate suppervizers! wha?
May 12th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Bill said: “I had one Indian plaintiff who claimed that he was racially harrassed when a colleague referred to him as a “brown noser”. This, the plaintiff explained in his deposition, could only be a reference to his brown skin. Even his own lawyer burst out laughing at that.”
All he needed was a definition: One who curries favor by–
Ah, forget it.
May 12th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
Priya V situation is tragic. Don’t ask how I know, but over 15 years ago she was dismissed from an educational institution and hospitalized for similar bizarre behaviors. She changed career paths, but clearly has not gotten the ongoing help that people with her illness need.
Tragically, this is playing itself out in the media. Someone needs to intervene. This isn’t just a “crazy lawsuit” or “liberal loon”…. Hopefully someone at Northwestern can get involved.
May 12th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Priya V situation is tragic. Don’t ask how I know, but over 15 years ago she was dismissed from an educational institution and hospitalized for similar bizarre behaviors. She changed career paths, but clearly has not gotten the ongoing help that people with her illness need.
Tragically, this is playing itself out in the media. Someone needs to intervene. This isn’t just a “crazy lawsuit” or “liberal loon”…. Hopefully someone at Northwestern can get involved.
May 12th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Priya V situation is tragic. Don’t ask how I know, but over 15 years ago she was dismissed from an educational institution and hospitalized for similar bizarre behaviors. She changed career paths, but clearly has not gotten the ongoing help that people with her illness need.
Tragically, this is playing itself out in the media. Someone needs to intervene. This isn’t just a “crazy lawsuit” or “liberal loon”…. Hopefully someone at Northwestern can get involved.
May 13th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
It looks like this insane situation will work itself out. I feel bad for the students who were plagued by this awful teacher.
I had a situation when I was an undergraduate. A professor had a terrible breakdown, which included sending me crazy emails and a few other really bad things. In the end, my Dean convinced me to file a sexual harrassment complaint against her. I’m a straight man, and she happens to be a lesbian. Anyway, this whole nightmare took up a full term and was squalid and terribly embarrassing to me. Do yourself a favor: stay away from mentally unbalanced college professors.
May 13th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Dartmouth is now the worse academic institution ever, plenty of discrimination and corruption. The largest donation in Dartmouth history, about 20 Mbucks by William Neucom, were given to promote a research center led by Richard Granger, now under investigation (the wife has been jailed in California last month). The current administration and in particular Dean Carol Folt is a complete disaster, the school is becoming a joke nationwide. Probably they should fire all the administration and restart from scratch.
May 13th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Dartmouth is now the worse academic institution ever, plenty of discrimination and corruption. The largest donation in Dartmouth history, about 20 Mbucks by William Neucom, were given to promote a research center led by Richard Granger, now under investigation (the wife has been jailed in California last month). The current administration and in particular Dean Carol Folt is a complete disaster, the school is becoming a joke nationwide. Probably they should fire all the administration and restart from scratch.
May 13th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Dartmouth is now the worse academic institution ever, plenty of discrimination and corruption. The largest donation in Dartmouth history, about 20 Mbucks by William Neucom, were given to promote a research center led by Richard Granger, now under investigation (the wife has been jailed in California last month). The current administration and in particular Dean Carol Folt is a complete disaster, the school is becoming a joke nationwide. Probably they should fire all the administration and restart from scratch.
May 13th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
think that comments where a real given name is employed tend to be by people pretending to just not be themselves? I can’t think of anyone named ‘Michael’ actually writing ‘Michael’. This of course refers to you you, ‘MICHAEL’ VENKATESAN.
May 14th, 2008 at 8:50 am
Feminists decry patriarchy; blaming it for every misdeed in the last few millenia while creditign it with none of the successes of that same time. They balance this hypocrisy by failing to recognize where matriarchy makes mistakes.
See how easily Harvard will get rid of its president (a man) for next to nothing (espousing an unwelcome but possibly true idea).
Feminism is basically saying: patriarchy=bad, matriarchy=good.
and men sell out to the matriarchy every day (until one day we wake up).
May 14th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
I do not attend Darthmouth, nor do I know this woman, but this situation seems to be completely ridiculous. She criticizes her students for being “facists”, and “stifling expression”, when she is the one actually doing these things. If you are not able to discuss critcism, and explain ideas, you should not be teaching elementary school, let alone at an Ivy League College. To make matters worse, she is acting more immature then the 18 year old students in her class. Resulting to cancelling classes and threatening students with a lawsuit, because you couldn’t handle criticism, is childish at best. At worst, it is indicative of deep emotional issues. Darthmouth, do yourself a favor, and take more time researching who you hire.
May 14th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Whoops, I realized I spelled Dartmouth wrong, twice, heh. I guess thats probably why I don’t go to an Ivy League school, haha!
May 14th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
@Chris H
And probably why you didn’t get into one. What are you doing here anyway?
May 15th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Wait… no one has mentioned the grievous typo in the title yet? Really? Where are all my intellectually arrogant, condescending, grammar-policing Ivy League cohorts?
June 15th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
OK kids. Here’s an idea I wanted to toss out to others who are just about fed about with radical loons who harass and terrorize the students for refusing to go along with their crank voodoo theories, be they about postmodern “French narrative theory” (whatever that is), Jungian “depth” psychology (read: non-empirical pseudoscience), and whatever other nonsense they’re passing off as legitimate and scholarly discourse.
Next time someone like Ms. Priya starts this stuff, go over to a consumer complaint website called RipoffReport.com and enter the prof’s name in the title along with other stuff that’ll come up in Google search (keywords).
If you spend $40K a year on tuition and get threatened with a lawsuit because you merely expressed yourself and didn’t accept the crank theory, then don’t you think you got “ripped off” there?
This is going to be the even scarier way to get back at these radicals. Forget Rate My Professor. Forget even the ACLU (even though at times, they do get involved at public universities where constitutional rights of students are violated).
Imagine opening your email and getting a missive from Ms. Venkatesan and then immediately getting to file a RipoffReport and having her name hit the top of the Google page rankings instantaneously! Go ahead and try it. See how fast you can do some damage right back after being terrorized by the twit.
If it’s true, what’s the prof going to do, start suing over it?
THIS is the answer. Let’s all start putting detailed info as to what goes on in the classroom (assuming it is outrageous and worth commenting on, of course) right at the top of the Google page rankings.
Heck, if I went to Dartmouth and paid Ivy League tuition, I’d be really ticked. But of course, she’s no longer there. Still, who ELSE is out there terrorizing the students? If it’s a left-wing nut or a right-wing loony bird pushing something down your throat and having a hissy fit if you keep to your own views if not convinced of the professor’s view on “French narrative theory,” just file a RipoffReport.
http://www.ripoffreport.com
It’s crafty and evil, yeah, because it’s permanent, but isn’t that the point? ; )