Vinita Prabhakar has taught “Bettering Myself” for a decade without incident, according to the complaint.
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English professor Vinita Prabhakar is suing South Florida State College after she was abruptly fired for teaching a story the college president deemed “political,” according to a complaint filed Wednesday in Florida district court.
Prabhakar assigned her freshman English students “Bettering Myself,” an award-winning story by Ottessa Moshfegh that centers on a Catholic school math teacher who drinks to excess and talks about sex with her students. One of her students told Prabhakar the story made them “a bit uncomfortable,” to which Prabhakar “acknowledged that the story could be difficult” and invited the student to talk more about it in class the next day, the complaint states.
At some point, the student who expressed discomfort spoke to another professor or administrator about the assignment, though “it is not known whether the student actually complained about the assignment or merely discussed the fact that the work had been assigned reading,” according to the complaint. An employee registered a complaint about the assignment, and Prabhakar learned from her department chair that the issue had “escalated.”
