Venkatesan Speaks! ...and speaks, and speaks...
Talk about long-winded. The Dartmouth Review interviewed Priya Venkatesan, who babbled for two days straight. (Literally. The interviewer ran out of tape.) She flip-flops on whether or not she'll sue and explains how Writing Program Director Tom Cormen used top-secret alphanumeric codes for covert intimidation:
PV: ...One time Tom Cormen was sitting in the class, and she [a student] asked me, how many T’s are in Gattaca. This was the kind of question she was asking, “how many T’s are in Gattaca?,” and I was about to answer her and Tom Cormen pre-empted me, “two t’s.” I’ll leave you to interpret it.
TDR: No. No, I don’t understand that.
PV: I have to tell you: it means tenure track.
TDR: Oh, okay.
PV: Because I wasn’t tenured track.
TDR: Oh, okay, yes.
PV: They were trying to intimate that I wasn’t ready for tenure track.
TDR: Yes, okay, I didn’t realize that’s what that meant.
PV: I’m kind of making this leap because this is the kind of subversiveness that was going on in that environment. That [girl x] would ask how many t’s are in Gattaca and that Tom Cormen would respond, “two T’s” as if I had no grasp on tenure track. ..but with [girl x], something’s going on with her. I’m not a doctor, but she’s not all there.
This interview is so bizarre, it's breathtaking. Venkatesan repeats every sentence at least five times, which explains why she never had time to answer questions during lecture. I tried really hard to imagine a context in which such loquaciousness would make sense—Dartlog is holding her captive? She is Scheherzade and silence is punishable by death?—but it's hard. The interview is nearly 8000 words long (that's 30 double-spaced essay-pages). And since you probably don't want to read all that, we've got the Cliff's Notes version after the jump.
Privy Venkatesan tells all to the Dartmouth Review.
On her worst student, and the importance of being able to take criticism:
She was probably the most abrasive, the most offensive, the most disruptive student. She ruined that class. She ruined it. She ruined it. ... I was lecturing on morals and ethics and she just gave me this horrible look, and I was pretty disturbed. I just said what is going on here? The problem with [girl x] is that she can’t take criticism. She can’t take the fact that there is something wrong with her work.
On her teaching evaluations, pre-Dartmouth:
They were all spectacular. They were all positive. I could fax them to you. I don’t mind, I could honestly fax them to you
An example of racism:
...there were two students, they were actually the more obnoxious students in the class, they were the impolite ones, who would have a little conversation about how geeky or how socially inept an Indian student was. You could tell that it was an Indian because the name they mentioned was South-Asian, and I know that, because I can recognize South Asian names.
On her book deal and current projects:
I really have a lot of work right now, I have two book manuscripts to work on, that doesn’t even include the manuscript about my life in higher education, I have two grants to work on, I have an article to work on, I have three articles to work on, I really have so much work to do and you would not even believe, I really have a lot of work to do. I am not the kind of person who wants to make a big fuss about petty or trivial things. So, I have a lot of things to do that I could be focusing my attention on in very productive ways.
Books always happen. They always happen. I’m [working] with a literary agent right now, I’m waiting to get more responses from them. Dartmouth is just going to be one chapter in the book. But I think like the things I’m telling you right now are going to be in the book.
On her new job at Northwestern:
I am at Northwestern, and I’m really enjoying it now, but word has gone out at Northwestern about my suit, so I don’t know if I should tell you... I don’t know what’s going to happen here, but hopefully, I won’t have too much of a fallout. I don’t want my career to suffer here, you know.
On whether she'd ever return to Dartmouth:
Right now, I anticipate no. I don’t know how things may change, but right now, I don’t anticipate coming back to the East Coast. I think it’s just a different culture, and my goal is to go back to California, because I really like California.
Go west, young Priya!
Finally, some quick snips:
- Lacan: "almost like a god"
- Dartmouth: "very secluded, very sheltered"
- Feeling about her teaching ability: "confident"
by Maureen O'Connor |
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D '11 says:
I think I know who Venkatesan's "worst student" is, and although she's rather talkative, possibly to the point that she might be annoying or abrasive, I don't know that she would be such a bitch as Venkatesan seems to think she is. Another friend who was in the same section of Writing 5 said that the girl brought up legitimate issues - especially technical course-related problems - and Venkatesan just couldn't handle it. Apparently pointing out that the course website can't work is harassment.
May 1, 2008 1:31 PM
playing says:
the armchair psychologist here, this woman needs help. the gattaca thing is totally paranoia, with seeing coded messages and all. then she has some very interesting choice of word repetitions that don't make sense to a sane person. yikes.
May 1, 2008 1:42 PM
ivyrumors says:
This is DELICIOUS. More please!
May 1, 2008 2:18 PM
t.a. says:
I have to echo the armchair psychologist--when you're first teaching at a fancy ivy league school, it's normal to have doubts like "am I smart enough to be doing this" and "will my students have respect for me," but this quickly passes. Unless of course you're mentally ill, in which case you project these fears and self-doubting thoughts on your students and then sue them. If Priya is reading this, hopefully she'll realize she needs a psychiatrist.
May 1, 2008 3:09 PM
t.a. says:
I have to echo the armchair psychologist--when you're first teaching at a fancy ivy league school, it's normal to have doubts like "am I smart enough to be doing this" and "will my students have respect for me," but this quickly passes. Unless of course you're mentally ill, in which case you project these fears and self-doubting thoughts on your students and then sue them. If Priya is reading this, hopefully she'll realize she needs a psychiatrist.
May 1, 2008 3:11 PM
@ t.a. says:
armchair psychologist again here.
obviously academics have their doubts at times. i'm a grad student and i do as well from time to time. but, mind you, priya is dartmouth class of '90 so she's going on 40 and should be past the point of "am i smart enough to be doing this."
what really concerns me is her constant repetition of very similar sentences. like she'll say a sentence and then repeat it in passive voice. and most of the adjectives used to describe the situation don't fit. she uses 'strange' and 'weird' to describe what happened to her with a high frequency. it is as if she is grappling with a reality that she can't quite understand.
at first i got a good deal of lulz out of this story, but reading this new interview makes me think some serious help is in order.
once again, i'm just an armchair psychologist, so any real psychologists can call me out on bullshit.
May 1, 2008 4:12 PM
Most hilarious statement made by Priya says:
"I'm not a doctor but she's not all there."
May 1, 2008 4:16 PM
jim says:
I am a psychoanalytic candidate and I can tell you that she is paranoid. I read that paragraph several times and I wondered when she would pull out the ball bearings and start muttering about the strawberries.
I hope Dartmouth will expunge the grades of, and rebate tuition to, the poor students who had to suffer from this woman's rantings.
May 1, 2008 5:12 PM
Bootmaker to the king says:
HELLO! She's suing her students over a fucking writing lecture. Disregarding for a second the fact that most English students are mental, you need to be really insecure to think suing your students is a viable recourse for recovering your sense of self worth. So now she's fucked up her career at Northwestern too, no one in their right mind would do this. You know what this totally reminds me of, is that teacher from Horace Mann... except she was less crazy.
http://nymag.com/news/features/45592/index1.html
Have these people never read, A Separate peace, The Sound and the Fury, ect, or seen sent of a Woman? You don't fuck with children of the Good and the Great. If the school has to choose between its students and this chick, guess who they'll choose?
May 1, 2008 5:14 PM
Bootmaker to the king says:
Jim:
This lady is nuts. but why would a student be asking her how to spell gattaca? I mean what is this 3rd grade? As a student who once went to the administration to get a (incompetent) lecturer fired, I can attest that just because she's paranoid doesn't mean the students weren't out to get her.
May 1, 2008 5:31 PM
Errant Thneed says:
It's like an extra-long version of the "wrong Guy" incident!
http://tinyurl.com/65cjrb
May 1, 2008 5:51 PM
@boormaker says:
I think the student asked her how to spell Gattaca because they had watched the film in class or for class. So it's a legitimate question, particularly in a writing class on science and technology.
May 1, 2008 6:00 PM
what? says:
"You could tell that it was an Indian because the name they mentioned was South-Asian, and I know that, because I can recognize South Asian names"
Um, hello? You're suing students for being racist when you made an extremely racial remark/assumption yourself! As if everyone can tell a person's race based on their name. Furthermore, so they called this person a nerd. Who cares? Why does she assume they are making this statement based on race?
May 1, 2008 6:26 PM
y11 says:
I get annoyed just READING this woman. I can't imagine how her students felt listening to this shit several hours a week.
May 1, 2008 6:37 PM
Bootmaker to the king says:
Yeah, maybe. Was this student from some sort of 4th world country without access to google? I think the last time I asked someone how to spell something was 1995.
May 1, 2008 7:16 PM
JMS says:
I would love to mock her, but it seems really clear that she's having some kind of schizophrenic episode.
May 1, 2008 8:13 PM
JMS says:
I would love to mock her, but it seems really clear that she's having some kind of schizophrenic episode.
May 1, 2008 8:20 PM
Cayuga says:
Don't the kids up in Hanover know how to Google?
Gataca -- Gattaka -- Gatacca - Gattaca!
May 1, 2008 8:21 PM
Bootmaker to the king says:
Cayuga:
What a perceptive observation. You'd think someone on this blog populated with ivy league students would have made the observation by now.... some say at 7:16. Which perhaps is evidence to Priya's argument. After reading the whole interview, I think the problem is that she hold's her position in too high regard. I'm not above the things she accuses her students of. In fact I have done them before, I would have loved to see this woman some how end up in a class at Wharton. Just because she happens to be teaching freshman comp (a class I blissfully tested out of) doesn't mean she's earned any kind of respect. I mean freshmen who thinks they're going to be the next Daniel Webster are not likely to hold much regard for a 40 year old non tenure track lecturer in freshman English.
The problem is that she herself lacks the maturity to sidestep the intellectual aggression of her students. And the lawsuit, I mean what was she thinking? Again, these self righteous liberal arts types study so long that they lose touch with the reality of how people actually behave. The whole point of literature is to give insight into the human condition, that is why we study it. And yet Priya seems to have no such insight. I'm not saying her students weren't flawed and arrogant. I'm saying a good lecturer would have used that insight to maintain control of the class.
May 1, 2008 8:38 PM
@what? says:
In all fairness, South Asian names are pretty obvious. Not many non-South Asians give their kids Indian or Pakistani names, unless they're celebrities.
May 1, 2008 9:21 PM
Student says:
Bootmaker:
For the record, No one thought they would be the next Daniel Webster. The class is not an elective; all students who scored under a 770 on the verbal section of the SATI must take it.
You give the impression that you imagine the class as a bunch of quasi-intellectual, pretentious wannabe's. Your assumption seems to be based on stereotypes and is very inaccurate.
The class was actually the most science based of any of the intro Writing courses. I don't think their was a single English major in the bunch.
May 1, 2008 10:19 PM
Bootmaker to the king says:
I'm only basing it on myself and how I behaved in my freshman classes. I thought I was going to be the next Hank Paulson and I certainly wouldn't have respected some 40 year old lecturer teaching intro english, the very fact that she's teaching that class probably tells you she's not worth listening too. I mean I wouldn't have tried to get her fired or anything, unless she gave me a shitty grade because she thought I was "Bullying, aggressive, and disrespectful" None of those things have anything to do with the subject matter. And, there's no law that says she's entitled to respect. PhD or no PhD she has to submit her ideas for consideration just like everyone.
Again, thankfully, I tested out of any such nonsense.
May 1, 2008 10:53 PM
The King of Spain says:
But Gattaca is a code! It's nucleobases, but it can't be parsed properly: GAT TAC A... the adenine is left hanging like a noose on her door, unless the thymine is part of a code, standing for terror or torment or something.
May 2, 2008 8:06 AM
@bootmaker says:
you wanted to be hank paulson when you were a freshman? that's really freaking weird.
May 2, 2008 1:14 PM
GATTACA! says:
I think I've cracked the code. T is for thymine. Thymine is unique to DNA (as opposed to RNA). RNA also has strands of nucleotides, but in RNA, U(uracil), not thymine bonds with adenine. Thus, if Ms. Venkatesan has no T in her code, she's probably an RNA virus.
That's definitely it.
Oh, and viruses can't get tenure.
May 2, 2008 1:20 PM
brown 08 says:
This is a systematic problem that is mirrored at all Ivy Leagues. It has probably been fermenting at Dartmouth for a while and the English dept. should have responded to student concerns (if they did exist) and evaluations about PV when they came in. I know a lot of Depts at my school have professors who are smart, but incompetent. Just because you hold a great degree and have published books/papers does not mean that you can command the respect of your students or even teach well for that matter.
May 2, 2008 2:01 PM
d11 says:
dartmouth independent had an interesting take (http://www.dartmouthindependent.com/archives/2008/05/post-9.html)
May 2, 2008 2:46 PM
@brown 08 says:
She was a post-doc instructor from DMS, NOT a professor in the English department. This has nothing to do with English, rather the writing program.
May 2, 2008 4:03 PM
ViolentQuaker says:
@ JMS:
Funny, I would love to mock her PRECISELY BECAUSE it seems really clear that she's having some kind of schizophrenic episode.
May 3, 2008 12:42 AM
p08 says:
This is why you should never let a PhD in literature near anything real.
May 4, 2008 1:56 AM
p08 says:
This is why you should never let a PhD in literature near anything real.
May 4, 2008 2:06 AM
D08 says:
this chick is flat out crazy. the worst part is that dartmouth is getting a bad rep now for having hired her...i'm curious to see how long it is before Northwestern cans her....
May 4, 2008 4:06 PM
D11 says:
Looking at the SA course guide, it seems like this weird psychotic break occurred only since she had been hired. Fall term the only course that has reviews in it gave her a B-, which, while it isn't fantastic, didn't sound like she was going to SUE them/go batshit. Winter term was when she started to get the D-/E ratings.
Although you have to sift through a LOT of crazy-ass babble, the Review interview with her suggests that the writing program is less-than-rigorous in orienting its professors or providing them with a solid basis for teaching. Considering Dartmouth's writing program has professors from ALL departments teaching writing and not just English or Writing professors, this should probably be looked into. (Also the fact that this woman was teaching in the first place.)
May 4, 2008 9:54 PM
@D11 says:
As you point out, she seems to have run into problems in winter. When they hired her, she probably seemed fine.
In five years of grad school, I've seen three colleagues flip out -- between 5% and 10% of the PhD students. Thankfully, their failures were more graceful and undergrads were unaffected. Dartmouth just hit the trifecta on this one. Random "luck."
May 4, 2008 10:11 PM
dartmouth says:
10 bucks says the dartmouth 11 who linked the TDI article is jamie berk. i want you to know that you are a huge toolish pile of crap. and that this is a widespread opinion of you.
May 5, 2008 9:44 AM
@dartmouth says:
nice. very intellectual. reaffirm dartmouth's reputation as a gossiping extension of high school. its really great to slander people on a public forum - so much fun.
May 5, 2008 11:49 AM
abigail says:
@@dartmouth: Jamie Berk wrote the tdi article. Not that he/she's not a tool, of course.
May 5, 2008 2:50 PM
@abigail says:
yes, i realize that; how is an appropriate response to an article to call the person a "huge toolish pile of crap" in a public forum? 10 bucks says the person who wrote that is a huge toolish pile of crap that makes him/herself feel good by dissing people he doesn't know on ivygate, and chances are that that's a widely held opinion
May 5, 2008 2:59 PM
Mickey Mouse says:
"I didn't say my wife was insane. I said she was fucking Goofy!"
May 5, 2008 3:16 PM
The Kenosha Kid says:
"She ruined it. ... I was lecturing on morals and ethics and she just gave me this horrible look, and I was pretty disturbed."
Tracy Flick?
May 5, 2008 9:09 PM
The Kenosha Kid says:
"She ruined it. ... I was lecturing on morals and ethics and she just gave me this horrible look, and I was pretty disturbed."
Tracy Flick?
May 5, 2008 9:12 PM
rizzy says:
I honestly picture her trying to lecture and the students being really hard on her because she is Indian and also because some douchebag dude thinks he has a legitimate point to make despite just wanting to seem like he knows what he's talking about. I've seen it happen at my school. At Dartmouth, I'm sure there is no lack of respect for faculty that doesn't have the accent you want them to have.
May 6, 2008 6:31 PM
hktk says:
Really rizzy? Did you read the "tenure track" stuff? How about the "horrible look" that "just ruined it"? Don't you think there might be a little paranoia at work here? Since the class clapped at his remarks, maybe the "douchebag" did have a legitimate point to make - I doubt the class would have responded that way if he was just posing.
May 8, 2008 11:15 AM
@Bootmaker says:
I find it pretty hard to believe you "tested out" of anything to do with English. Your English fucking sucks. Re-read your goddamned post.
May 15, 2008 2:41 PM