Kristin Marshburn, 28, said that while she was studying at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, in Fall 2016, Anthony Polito made a bizarre remark while sitting in the front row of his business class.
“He said to me that if I wore a shirt that low cut for the rest of the semester, I’d be sure to get an A,” Marshburn told NBC News Tuesday.
“I remember their faces just being appalled.”
The former student said his “bold comment” shocked her since the class was small and mostly made up of men.
“They looked sad for me,” she said of the other students in Polito’s supply chain management course.
Disturbed by her professor’s sleazy comment, Marshburn immediately reported the incident to the business school’s dean.
Polito never returned to class after she reported him, Marshburn shared.
In January 2017, Polito resigned from his tenured associate professor position at ECU after working at the school since 2001, the university told NBC News.
It’s unclear if Polito left the position because of his comments toward Marshburn, who was in her junior year at the time.
Marshburn praised ECU for how they handled her complaint against Polito.
“East Carolina did an incredible job of making me feel safe, heard, believed,” she told the outlet.
Marshburn decided to come forward with her account of her former professor’s inappropriate comments to let other women know they should speak up if they feel mistreated by a person in a position of power.
“It’s not OK for our professors, or anyone, to make sexual comments, or about anything we’re wearing, the way that we look,” Marshburn stated.
Marshburn decided to come forward with her account of her former professor’s inappropriate comments to let other women know they should speak up if they feel mistreated by a person in a position of power.
Marshburn is the second woman to claim Polito — who targeted and killed three faculty members at UNLV on Dec 6. — made them feel uncomfortable when they were students.
On Thursday, a second woman revealed that he made unwanted contact through emails and texts to her for nearly an entire semester and would buy her gifts in his attempt to pursue her.
“I felt preyed upon,” Polito’s former student, who asked to remain anonymous, told NBC News on Thursday.
The 32-year-old Durham, North Carolina, woman said that she once viewed Polito as a mentor until he invited her to Las Vegas during her senior year in 2012.
“I think that’s about when I was like, ‘I have to cut this man off because he got the wrong idea,’” the woman told the outlet.
“It was just so bizarre.”
The former student never reported the professor to any school officials because he was a well-respected member of the facility on campus.