Professor Threatens To Sue Students

Priya Venkatesan, currently at Northwestern University, who taught English at Dartmouth College, complained that her students created a hostile work environment. “My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful. They’d argue with your ideas.”
After a student engaged her in a class argument, Venkatesan complained: “And I think what happened afterwards was that some people – I can’t name them, and I don’t know how many there were, but it was a significant number – started clapping for his statements. It was a very humiliating moment to my life; it was extremely humiliating, that my students would clap against me.”

So Venkatesan decided to get even. In an email to her student, she warned:

Dear Student: As a courtesy, you are being notified that you are being named in a potential class action suit that is being brought against Dartmouth College, which is being accused of violating federal anti-discrimination laws. Please do not respond to this email because it will be potentially used against you in a court of law. – Priya Venkatesan, PhD

She added: “[I’m] writing a book detailing my experiences as your instructor, which will ‘name names’ so to speak. I have all of your evaluations and these will be reproduced in the book.”

After she was ridiculed in extensive media coverage, Venkatesan told the campous newspaper at Northwestern: “The situation was not handled the way it probably should’ve been handled,” she said. “I want to put it behind me. I think that’ll be healthy for everyone involved.”