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serious bzns!

entrenous88
2008-05-01 04:31 pm UTC (link)

Dartmouth has always had the reputation of being extremely conservative and at times seemingly fostering bias and prejudice among its student body.

So while this particular woman may be batshit crazy, I wonder about the whole story behind this suit, what the students were saying and doing, in what context remarks were made, and, in short, the atmosphere that created this situation (though I've no doubt that the lecturer contributed).

I wonder, too, that every part of the evidence so far seems to come from Dartblog, which is of course coming out of The Dartmouth Review. This publication is *not* the college's standard campus newspaper (that's The Dartmouth, which I believe is one of the oldest student-run campus papers in the country). Rather, it's a highly conservative alternate paper -- so known as highly conservative on an already conservative campus. It is perhaps most famous for a horrible "practical joke" in which an issue ran with a passage from Mein Kampf in place of their standard motto. This was quite a while ago, to be sure (1990) but hey, turnover of attitudes and biases can take a while.

So yes, that this aca-scandal is coming out of Dartmouth, and the reporting from the Dartmouth Review -- I just wonder if there may be some basis to a few aspects of her case.

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	Re: serious bzns! llama_treats 2008-05-01 06:06 pm UTC (link)
	Well, there is also an article in The Dartmouth</i> about it, not that it makes much of a difference. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Re: serious bzns! snarkhunter 2008-05-01 11:04 pm UTC (link)
	I admit I'm having some of the same thoughts. There may be something deeper at the root of this than just "waaah my students disagreed with me." It's possible she did suffer real harrassment in the classroom, and if that's the case, it needs to be dealt with. Not in this manner, though. Oy. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: serious bzns! entrenous88 2008-05-02 12:00 am UTC (link)
	Completely agree that she should have gone about things differently. If there are some legitimate claims of harassment here, as I suspect there may be, she's created a very difficult situation for herself with this, "Hi, I'm ~~crazycakes!~~ suing you!" emailing. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Re: serious bzns! frequentmouse 2008-05-02 06:03 pm UTC (link)
	YAY! I'm glad someone else pointed that out; all I have close witnesses for is that Dartmouth students tend to be pigs to female instructors in the summer writing program at Harvard and that they routinely cheat at soccer. As long as I've been hanging out on the fringes of academe, I've never actually meant anyone who went to Dartmouth, whch gives me to think. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: serious bzns! frequentmouse 2008-05-02 06:04 pm UTC (link)
	met. MET. sheesh. (Reply to this)(Parent)

Re: serious bzns!

issendai
2008-05-03 03:19 pm UTC (link)

I can definitely see that. I've seen similar things happen at other schools, including situations in which the "Gattaca/tenure track" comment wouldn't have been complete batshit. The cultural and linguistic divide she was working across couldn't have helped either.

What's going to complicate the case--if it ever goes anywhere--is that she's so obviously crazy that it's going to be hard to separate normal human reactions to craziness from the unacceptable behavior. It's likely that most of the students involved, regardless of their behavior, are going to be slightly hardened because of this mess, more defensive of their right to treat other people like they treated (or were accused of treating) this teacher. And that's a pity.

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Re: serious bzns!

entrenous88
2008-05-03 03:51 pm UTC (link)

I completely agree. There may be legitimate charges, but she's gotten into an unfortunate position already with these various poorly planned and executed, and unfortunately now very public, moves.

Yes, yes, I agree with this. Adding to their cynicism from the circumstances you mentioned, this group is made up of kids who didn't place at a certain level in their verbal SATs, and so were required to take this class. They may have other resentment/defensive issues about being at Dartmouth anyway, and I wonder to what degree her teaching and curriculum materials became the target of their more general defensiveness.

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Re: serious bzns!

mistressrenet
2008-05-04 02:27 am UTC (link)

Our local paper covered it-- no friends of the Dartmouth Review-- and had an interview with one of her former students who was not in the lawsuit batch, and who she apparently considered an ally (at least at one point). And hir (can't remember!) memory didn't match her allegations in the slightest. Now they were still a Big Green student, but it's rare that when the students have the opportunity to bitch about the college, they decline!

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Re: serious bzns!

koipool
2008-05-05 07:14 pm UTC (link)

Hi, I'm totally late to the party here but I feel the need to speak in defense of my school. We have a bad reputation for conservatism, but we really aren't that conservative up here -- IIRC something around 85% of our campus voted Democrat in 2004, and it was certainly due in part to the efforts of our local liberals that New Hampshire went blue instead of red in that election. The Review is indeed very conservative, but it's also not taken very seriously by the majority of campus (and we do also have a liberal newspaper, in addition to The Dartmouth, which actually tends to skew liberal). From an institutional standpoint we now have green and gender-neutral housing, which I think are decent steps forward, and we also have a kickass Women and Gender Studies program that outshines a lot of other departments (including mine, sadly, oh well).

Which is not to say we haven't had our fair share of scandals, and I won't deny that individual students may be sucky, because they might be. Every school has its sucky students. I've experienced plenty of suck here. But I cringe whenever anyone rails against us for being conservative, or says that something like this should be "expected" from us, because... really, I've been here for five years, and I've had classes with women and people of color, and I've never encountered an environment of hostility towards a professor like what was described by this one. I've seen some terrible professors, and anger on the part of students, but even then, nothing like this.

More importantly, I feel like taking blatant insanity like this seriously and giving it attention has the potential to undermine and trivialize actual complaints that may legitimately occur. The more attention this gets, the harder it's going to be for the woman who actually gets harassed to come forward.

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	Re: serious bzns! redwarrior 2008-05-06 09:18 pm UTC (link)
	applause (Reply to this)(Parent)

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