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‘In a Feb. 25 Facebook post, Jetter stated that she believes [Dartmouth’s complaint against her] concerned a political sketch she drew in her class. The drawing, which Jetter has called “The Rat King” in the Facebook post, depicted prominent figures, including President Donald Trump, as rats. In a Feb. 25 post, Jetter wrote that the cartoon intended to critique late-stage capitalism.’

Senior Lecturer Alexis Jetter has an impressive journalism background, and Dartmouth seems to have hired her off the tenure track to teach the trade. But lately she’s been a bit on the loose wig:

Jetter wrote that she had lost her temper and cursed at two male students in the WGSS departmental lounge. She alleged that the students had refused to leave the lounge when asked. 

Lots of filling in needed here. How dramatically did she lose her temper? Does ‘cursed’ mean you fucking assholes at the top of her lungs, or damn fellas wish to hell you’d leave sotto voce? What hideous behaviors warranted her response – if it was warranted? Dartmouth’s thick with pissoff-artist frat boys; was one such group staging an antifeminist intervention?

But even if it were – You don’t engage. If they’re really bothering you, you leave. Maybe you ask a colleague what you should do. Maybe you call security. A shouting match is a truly bad idea.

As for the rat-as-late-stage-capitalism-icon — oy. Again, we need to fill in a lot of blanks here, but she herself writes that the lesson was about Trump as capitalism’s noxious end stage, which again you might want to be careful… Aside from the fact that you can’t take for granted every student’s agreement that Trump’s a rat, there’s the silliness of insisting – because you wish it so – that he’s the last gasp of capitalism.

Anyway, ol’ UD can’t blame her for saying fuck it when the school began coming at her with formal grievance procedures. She wisely resigned before being subjected to that shit.

Margaret Soltan, March 2, 2025 3:43PM
Posted in: professors

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