Remember this lady?

By Moye | Monday, May 19, 2008 | 6 Comments

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When I first wrote about former Dartmouth professor Priya Venkatesan and her plan to sue her students for “intellectual distress” (which is funny, because I get “intellectual distress” every time I read some of the comments on here–OH SNAP! Just kidding. No, really. I’m kidding. Please don’t flame me.), all I wanted to do what hear from this lady herself, just so that tiny sliver of hope in my stone-cold heart wouldn’t die. You know, maybe this lady really did have a point? I mean, I heard that Dartmouth kids are pretty snarky and rude. Maybe Venkatesan was a true victim in our academic world. Right?

Luckily for me, the Dartmouth Review posted a 2-day interview (yes, two days. This interview took TWO DAYS because the poor student ran out of tape.) with Venkatesan and let me just summarize the huge transcript for you. This lady is C-R-A-Z-Y.

Not only does she repeat herself a billion times, which explains why the interview process took 48 hours, but she absolutely makes no sense. Here are my favorite parts:

In reference to her claims that her students were discriminating her:

I think that right now because there are so many laws out there, slavery is outlawed, we have the Civil Rights Act, we have all these laws in place to protect minorities, to protect women, to protect the elderly, so we have these laws in place. No one made a comment about my ethnicity. That did not happen, and I have to say that it did not happen. So what is the basis of my claim? I think that the basis of my claim is that the behavior, like I said in which the tables were turned around, was partially motivated by race.

Whaaaaat? But more specifically,

I think at one point when I was reading a paper during the writing workshop, there were two students, they were actually the more obnoxious students in the class, they were the impolite ones, who would have a little conversation about how geeky or how socially inept an Indian student was. You could tell that it was an Indian because the name they mentioned was South-Asian, and I know that, because I can recognize South Asian names.

Note to self: gossip among classmates does not equal racial discrimination.

Here’s the best part, where she describes how one particular girl attempted to undermine her teaching by constantly asking how to spell words:

PV: One time Tom Cormen was sitting in the class, and she asked me, how many T’s are in Gattaca. This was the kind of question she was asking, “how many T’s are in Gattaca?,” and I was about to answer her and Tom Cormen pre-empted me, “two t’s.” I’ll leave you to interpret it.

TDR: No. No, I don’t understand that.

PV: I have to tell you: it means tenure track.

TDR: Oh, okay.

PV: Because I wasn’t tenured track.

TDR: Oh, okay, yes.

PV: They were trying to intimate that I wasn’t ready for tenure track.

TDR: Yes, okay, I didn’t realize that’s what that meant.

Hmm…Here’s what I want to know. Gattaca, like the movie with Ethan Hawke? What does that have to do with anything?

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Efren

This is why I didn't do science studies in soc grad school! Science studies, more than any other social theory that I learned, forces people to become extremely convoluted in their logic to the point where it makes no sense to anyone, never mind the fact that most of them have inferiority complexes because they're constantly used to having to defend themselves.

Seriously, she doesn't stand a ghost of a chance in court unless she can get someone to corroborate on her accusations--her students talking smack about students, especially eavesdropping, doesn't make for a sound accusation of racism. If no one ever made a specific comment about her and her race, and if she can't recall what happened, then no one's gonna believe her, at least in a court. Sheesh.

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