This may be my favorite story of the year so far…
Priya Venkatesan is a professor/lecturer (she’s referred to as both and I’m not sure which is correct) at Dartmouth in the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric. She recently wrote an email to her students from last term. It says:
Dear 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 [sic] shall go unmentioned in this email) of violating Title VII of anti-federal [sic] 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 experiences as your instructor, which will “name names” so to speak. I have all of your evaluations and these will be reproduced in the book.
Have a nice day.
I thought the “have a nice day” part was a sweet touch. It’s always nice to call people bigots and then wish them well.
According to Dartblog, this is real. Someone at Dartblog did an intereview with this lady. You can read about it here. The lecturer/professor apparently plans to sue Dartmouth employees and her students. I can’t quite figure out what her issue is with her students, but it does sound as if she received negative evaluations. And people think authors are overly insensitive about reviews. At least none have sued…to my knowledge.
As a lawyer, I find this somewhat appalling. If she was discriminated against by Dartmouth or harassed by fellow professors or Dartmouth employees, that’s one thing. Threatening the students because they hurt her feelings? Sack up, babe. You look ridiculous.
UPDATE: As of this morning, she dropped the idea of the lawsuit. Also, in case you’re wondering, she’s now a research assistant at Northwestern. I’m kind of hoping she no longer works with students.
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