Ex-lecturer threatens to sue former students

[Dr. Strange]

Cross-post from the Education Forum:

A former Dartmouth College lecturer is threatening to sue as many as 14 of her former students for harassment. Priya Venkatesan, who left the college in March, said students in her freshman writing class disrespected her, complained about her to her boss and attacked the material she tried to teach.
...
"They were attacking thinkers that, even with my degrees, I would think twice about attacking," Venkatesan said. "I'm wondering why I was subjected to that behavior. . . . It was just a little disturbing that you'd get a student who'd come up to you after getting a reading assignment and say, 'So I underlined this. This is X, Y and Z why this statement is false.' . . . It consistently kept happening."
...
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080501/FRONTPAGE/805010350

A master's degree in genetics and a Ph.D. in literature. Hmmm.

[TZ]

1. Harrassment? For criticizing the material and her?

Umm hello, freedom of speech anyone. She's being discriminated agaisnt based on gender and ethnicity even though no one has made a biased comment?
I get the feeling she's a shitty teacher, teaching shitty material and is using the cry of bias to cover her ass.
I've had the misfortune to encounter this type in my profession.

[Dr. Strange]

2. Ooh, another article:

From http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120995103004666569.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. "My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful," she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. "They'd argue with your ideas." This caused "subversiveness," a principle English professors usually favor.

Ms. Venkatesan's scholarly specialty is "science studies," which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, "teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth." She continues: "Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct."

The agenda of Ms. Venkatesan's seminar, then, was to "problematize" technology and the life sciences. Students told me that most of the "problems" owed to her impenetrable lectures and various eruptions when students indicated skepticism of literary theory. She counters that such skepticism was "intolerant of ideas" and "questioned my knowledge in very inappropriate ways." Ms. Venkatesan, who is of South Asian descent, also alleges that critics were motivated by racism, though it is unclear why.

After a winter of discontent, the snapping point came while Ms. Venkatesan was lecturing on "ecofeminism," which holds, in part, that scientific advancements benefit the patriarchy but leave women out. One student took issue, and reasonably so – actually, empirically so. But "these weren't thoughtful statements," Ms. Venkatesan protests. "They were irrational." The class thought otherwise. Following what she calls the student's "diatribe," several of his classmates applauded.

Paging Dr. Sokal...

[TZ]

6. As I suspected

She's mad at the students for questioning her personal agenda because you know she has the degree and therefore knows everything:sarcasm:
You know, I kind of hope she does sue. She will be shown for the total idiot she is.

[realisticphish]

3. my biggest problem

with lit courses is that they encourage you to think critically, as long as you are well within the designated perimeters as defined by literary critics.

[lizerdbits]

7. Me too

My experience with literature is as follows:

Q: "What do YOU THINK the author means when he/she says X?"
A: What I think
WRONG!

And that's why I went into science. You can defend your position with data and facts. If there's any conspiracy theory I would believe in it would be the one where you are not allowed to interpret literature in any way other than the way some smoke filled room of literary people agree on. :rofl:

[moggie]

9. But science is just a "social construct"

It "has suspect access to truth". You're just helping perpetuate the patriarchy!

[Deep13]

4. Breaking: Students Smarter than Professor, ...

...or Help! No One Believes my Bullshit!

[varkam]

5. Sounds like a piece of work to me

I'd hate to have her as a prof

[WoodrowFan]

8. wow

Check the stoies in the Dartmouth paper. This part jumped out at me.. The department chair, Dr. Corman, was auditing her class after students began complaining...

Venkatesan points to one of Cormen’s actions while present in the class as an example of his subversiveness. One student asked her how many t’s are in the word ‘Gattaca’, and Professor Cormen replied that there are two. Venkatesan said that in the academic world, TT stands for tenure track and that every aspiring professor wants to stay on the path to getting tenure. Cormen was supposedly suggesting that she would not receive tenure, and she found this intimation to be very intimidating. Others have proposed that Professor Cormen was just trying to be helpful.

http://dartreview.com/archives/2008/05/05/venkatesan_to_sue_the_college.php

How many K's in "wackjob"?

[LeftishBrit]

10. She sounds a wee bit unstable...

Most lecturers would be delighted if their students were prepared to argue and to think critically about the material given to them. It's those who can't or won't bother to think who are a source of frustration to us!

'"They were attacking thinkers that, even with my degrees, I would think twice about attacking," Venkatesan said. "I'm wondering why I was subjected to that behavior. . . . It was just a little disturbing that you'd get a student who'd come up to you after getting a reading assignment and say, 'So I underlined this. This is X, Y and Z why this statement is false.' . . . It consistently kept happening."'


She seems to have a very authoritarian view of teaching and learning: a bit ironic for someone with her 'contemporary' feminist philosophical views. Demanding that your students write you an essay on 'respect' sounds more like something that a rather old-fashioned schoolteacher might do with an unruly bunch of 13-year-olds; not a lecturer with adult undergraduates who happen to express diverse views.

[onager]

11. She thinks she has problems?

Ha! I Foucault in your general direction!

5,000 pounds compensation for woman tormented by 'farting boss'!

ANI Friday 16th May, 2008

London, May 16 : This can surely be termed as a 'smelly compensation', quite literally, for a woman has won herself a whopping 5,000 pounds after her boss kept teasing her by farting in her direction.

Theresa Bailey, who was the only woman on the firm's sales team, saw red when her boss kept breaking wind in her direction, which made her complain to senior managers about the "laddish" behaviour among the men.

The 43-year-old mother of three claimed that line manager David Nye regularly "lifted his right cheek" in her direction and farted.

In fact, the lady was also made to wear a badge saying "I'm simple" after she faced some computer problems.

The teasing crossed limits when she had a beach ball thrown at her head when she dared to question the sexist mockery targeted at her.

She was given a cold shoulder when she complained about the state of the communal loos at direct marketing firm Selectabase, in Deal, Kent, about which Nye emailed a colleague. "That's why we don't employ women," BBC quoted Nye, as saying in the email.

However, the lady only got a fair treatment when a tribunal ruled she would not have suffered the same treatment if she were a man.

She also sent an email to company director Steve Selwood saying: "The number of times the person at my side would lift up his bottom off the chair and fart and think it's funny is unreal. I am no prude but I do think there is a time and a place for that behaviour."

Ate the hearing in Ashford, she said: "I felt so humiliated, my heart sank."

Later, a Selectabase spokesman insisted that the firm had 12 years of excellent employee relations.

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php?sid=360126