Priya Venkatesan '90's recent threat to sue the College, Dartmouth Medical School and the students in her Writing 5 class is, simply put, outrageous. Venkatesan claims the suit is a response to "harassment and discrimination" ("Prof threatens lawsuit against her students," April 28). The trials she purports to have endured, however, range from the ridiculous to the absurd (her paranoia about conspiratorial codes being expressed through spelling in an offhanded comment -- 'Gattaca' -- comes to mind). The growing Venkatesan soap opera represents a pathetic mix of seemingly poor teaching, repression of academic freedom, unprincipled opportunism and self-victimization, all of which have no place at our College.
Venkatesan's primary role as a Writing 5 instructor was to introduce first-year students to the fundamentals of college-level writing and the principles of academic discourse. How sad that these students' first insight and feedback about writing at Dartmouth were tainted by such an anti-academic and grossly unprofessional experience, ironically brought on by an instructor crying "anti-intellectualism."
With her poorly written ("anti-federal discrimination?"), grammatically deficient and nebulous e-mail message notifying students of the lawsuit, Venkatesan hardly inspires confidence as a writing instructor. The e-mail, in which she threatens to sue them and "name names" in her prospective book about the experience, speaks volumes about her poor, unprofessional conduct: Venkatesan's actions reveal her to be -- rather than a martyr maligned by unruly students -- an unhinged instructor insecure in her ability to teach and to face the challenges of academia.
The self-victimizing nature of Venkatesan's claims is telling. In her numerous and highly varied comments to the media, Venkatesan has repeatedly invoked discrimination. But against what? She does not elaborate on what identity she felt compelled to defend or what specifically offended her. Ironically, in the Student Assembly Course Guide review for the class she intends to sue, Venkatesan received the lowest possible score in the "Was sensitive to the diversity of the students in the class" category.
Venkatesan cites "hostility, nastiness and anti-intellectualism" as reasons for the potential lawsuit. She points to a specific incident in which students in her Writing 5 class clapped in response to a classmate's rebuttal of Venkatesan's argument. If that argument resulted from the same thought processes that convinced Venkatesan that it was a good idea to sue her students, then it was likely more than worthy of the reaction it garnered. Furthermore, students spontaneously clapping in a required writing class suggests one of two things: either they were intellectually stimulated and passionate about the subject (in which case her blustering about the impropriety of the reaction is all the more farcical); or they were randomly united in their elation about a student's success in standing up to their instructor whom they perceived as oppressive. Neither scenario plays to Venkatesan's favor in her efforts to sue.
But all ludicrousness aside, Venkatesan (though clearly a highly exaggerated outlier on this academic scale) does to some extent represent a quiet trend appearing in select classrooms across the campus and the country. The reality is that many students do not feel safe to express their true opinions in the classroom, afraid of a bad grade or public embarrassment at the hands of their professors. Let's hope being sued doesn't become an additional fear.
