By Emilia Benton

A Dartmouth College professor made headlines last week when she threatened to sue seven of her former students for harassment after they disagreed with her in class, saying that their “anti-intellectualism” in asking questions and contradicting her opinions violated her civil rights.

Priya Venkatesan, also a 1990 Dartmouth alumna who graduated with advanced degrees in genetics and comparative literature, taught freshman English at the college. She has stated that certain students were very unresponsive to “French narrative theory,” thus resulting in hostile working conditions. Also preparing lawsuits against her superiors at Dartmouth for not taking her allegations seriously, she has publicly stated that she is also writing a book where she will “name names.” She alleges that she voluntarily left the job last month because she was subjected to “inappropriate and unprofessional behavior” at the college after management disregarded her ridiculous claims.

The students first learned that they were being named in this ridiculous lawsuit via a series of angry, passive-aggressive e-mails sent by Venkatesan, one of which read (sic): “I tried to send an e-mail 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 (who shall go unmentioned in this e-mail) of violating Title VII of anti-federal 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 evaluation and these will be reproduced in the book. Have a nice day.”

Classy, huh? Not only is the way she handled telling her students of her actions inappropriate, but she really should have proofread her writing before sending these messages out to her students who have been adamantly critiquing her teaching style as a professor of English. These students have been advised by their dean not to respond to Venkatesan’s e-mails even though administrators are confident that she has no basis for legal action.

Upon realizing that she cannot actually sue her students for employment discrimination, Venkatesan decided to simply name them in a list of grievances in the suit against Dartmouth. The students named in the lawsuit have not been shy about coming forward to share their experiences having had Venkatesan as a professor. These accounts included an incident where Venkatesan cancelled class for a week after the class gave a round of applause to a student who openly disagreed with Venkatesan’s views on post-modernism. Venkatesan claims that the incident caused her “emotional distress.” Seriously? Applause in class, distressing? Was it truly that awful that students in class at an Ivy League school were paying attention and were genuinely interested in the topic at hand? Venkatesan claims she was horrified at the students’ “crime” of intolerance of ideas. Wow, what a horrible thing to have your students care enough to argue.

The students in her Writing 5 class have maintained that they believe that Venkatesan refused to accept any opinions that contradicted her own and would lower the grades of students who disagreed with her in their papers, or in verbal class participation. These students also complained in their evaluations about Venkatesan’s incessant typos and flimsy grasp of U.S. laws.

Venkatesan has also tried to play the race card in this debacle (she is of Indian ancestry) which is where Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act comes in. Title VII prohibits employment discrimination based on gender, race, color, national origin or religion. However, nothing on her list of classroom grievances showcases evidence of racism.

I’m sure college students across the country have had some kind of major or minor tiff with a professor whose teaching ethic was less than satisfactory. It’s 2008; let’s hope there aren’t any professors here at the University who would find applause from students so obviously engaged in a class discussion to be offensive enough to file a lawsuit over.

Emilia Benton is a junior print journalism student. You may e-mail her at [email protected].