When it comes to classroom debauchery, I thought I'd heard it all. There's always the one about the student who did or didn't plagiarize and got Parkhursted, the one about the student who slept with the prof, the student who got arrested for drunkenly participating in a class he wasn't enrolled in with his shirt off, the student who said something memorably and inappropriately crude, or that kid in the back who was so high -- the list goes on. However, just when I thought I was becoming bored and unimpressed with tales of classroom mayhem, there emerges on the scene the one about the disgruntled prof who wanted to sue her students. Jackpot.
On April 28, The Dartmouth reported that Priya Venkatesan '90 was threatening to take legal action against both the College and students from her Writing 5 class ("Prof threatens lawsuit against her students"). Though it sounds like an episode of either "Law & Order" or "The O.C.," Venkatesan is claiming that her students and colleagues subjected her to "inappropriate and unprofessional behavior" to the point where she feels she has the grounds to take action under the Civil Rights Act. While I am a full supporter of civil rights, justice for all, blah, blah, blah, I think the entire ordeal is a ridiculous embarrassment that should be given no more attention lest it become even more of a saga open to mockery than it already has.
Amidst a long list of absurd claims from Venkatesan, however, one thing she said rang true and especially resonated this past week: "Sometimes you have to take some time out and address the issue of justice in society and to really implement the values that are so lacking at Dartmouth." Venkatesan has a valid point: We can definitely afford to work on tolerance and equality at Dartmouth, as it applies to gender, race, sexual orientation and any other subcategory that creates diversity in the student body. Just this past week the Dartmouth community was forced to be reminded that there does exist a significant degree of ignorance and discrimination within the mentality of certain students at Dartmouth. I'm talking, of course, about the infamous "BlarFlex" comic (April 24). Though the comic caused quite a stir, it shouldn't have come as such a shock to us. That type of discrimination, whether spoken aloud or not, happens everyday here.
Venkatesan is making a whole lot of noise about an important issue at Dartmouth; the trouble is, her noise can only be discarded as pure gibberish reminiscent of the boy who cried wolf and then got a book deal from it. When it comes to arguing "civil rights" issues or matters concerning politically correct speech, there are boundaries. You can't just slap "discriminatory," or, in Venkatesan's words, "incessant barrage of ... hostility, nastiness, and anti-intellectualism" on anything un-PC you feel like. Doing so demeans the accusations that address the real issues or circumstances. Call me cynical, but I don't think students speaking up for themselves in class falls in that category.
As most Dartmouth students would agree, one of the things I love about our prestigious College is our freedom to express our ideas in a classroom. We're not lab rats, and if you've attended even one class at Dartmouth, you know we certainly don't tend to just eat up and swallow whatever a professor tells us without considering how we may argue it first. If a student in Venkatesan's class had an idea that was controversial by her standards or the student argued back, then I would say that's the best kind of student -- the one that heats up the class discussion. And if the other students want to throw in some applause, what's the problem with a little support for one's classmate? Or maybe Venkatesan is just uncomfortable with loud noises in the classroom.
Sure, Dartmouth's not perfect. We are guilty, as Venkatesan charged, with needing to work on some social issues. But as far as I'm concerned, she hasn't suffered the brunt of the issues. The fact that she is claiming to be a wronged victim of injustice just because of the few, measly incidents she names is disrespectful to people on this campus who have been real victims of discrimination because of their race or gender, not classroom ideas.
But, hey, what can we do? Venkatesan said of Dartmouth, "a shithole is a shithole" -- quite an interesting choice of words for someone who felt she was suffering from "anti-intellectualism." Perhaps her pending book, which has nothing do with her lawsuit threats, will be more eloquent. I know I'll be eagerly awaiting its arrival on bookstore shelves, perhaps nestled right in between Paris Hilton's "Confessions of an Heiress" and O.J. Simpson's "If I Did It."
