Well-Educated Star

An altercation involving an Indian woman passenger during which she berated a train conductor with repeated references to her elite educational upbringing has gone viral on the Web.

The passenger, who has been identified as Hermon Kaur Raju, a New York University graduate, who interned at BNP Paribas, by various websites, boarded the train headed to New York City in Westport, Conn. She became irate after a conductor approached her to tone down her cellphone conversation and the use of profanity, launching into a tirade peppered with numerous references to her stellar educational credentials:

“Excuse me, do you know what schools I’ve been to and how well-educated I am?”

“I am not a crazy person. I’m a very well-educated person.”

“I was not cursing, excuse me, do you know what schools I’ve been to?”

“I’m sorry, do you think I’m a little hoodlum?”

Raju deleted her Twitter, Facebook and MySpace accounts after video of the altercation surfaced and went viral. Several parodies of the incident have since been published on YouTube. And Facebook now hosts a page “Hermon Raju is More Educated Than You.”

According to some reports, a public announcement was made on the train’s speaker system after the incident requesting passengers to refrain from using profanity, “especially those people who went to Harvard or Yale or are from Westport.”