A pharmacist who was threatened with expulsion over risqué social media posts has revealed how she’ll be spending her $250,000 settlement from the college. 

Kimberly Diei, 31, told DailyMail.com she’s planning to invest part of the payout from the University of Tennessee on a vacation ‘somewhere tropical with party vibes’. 

Diei successfully sued the school when anonymous complaints were made to administrators about her online posts, and they voted to have her kicked out in 2020.

The grad student hit back by saying the move violated her First Amendment rights, and she completed her course after the university backtracked on the expulsion. 

Now a pharmacist at Walgreens in Memphis, Diei reflected on the years-long battle with her alma mater in an interview this week with DailyMail.com.

Diei said she doesn’t know who lodged the anonymous complaints which sparked the whole saga, but she thinks it could have been ‘jealous’ classmates. 

‘I still don’t know who they are, but I know that less than a month after I joined the program, I had already set myself apart as a leader,’ she said. 

‘I was already positioning myself to get certain scholarships and internships, and I think they were trying to plot against me to get me removed from the program’.

Kimberly Diei, a pharmacist who was threatened with expulsion over risqué social media posts has revealed how she’ll be spending her $250,000 settlement from the college 

Kimberly Diei, 31, told DailyMail.com she’s planning to invest part of the payout from the University of Tennessee on a vacation ‘somewhere tropical with party vibes’ 

Diei said tensions accelerated after she secured a coveted internship at Cardinal Health’s Nuclear Pharmacy facility in New Jersey. 

She said the complaints centered around two ‘sex positive’ posts she shared in August 2020 on X, which was then called Twitter, on her account called kimmykasi. 

In one post, Diei shared explicit lyrics from the Cardi-B song WAP (an acronym for wet-ass p***y) which she explained was part of a social media trend at the time. 

Another post showed a selfie of Diei wearing a low-cut red vest, crimson lipstick and gold eyeshadow with her hair tied up, alongside a sexually-charged caption. 

‘Spent all this time getting my hair done just for your man to f*** it up’, she wrote. 

‘WAP was such a big song at the time, and I was participating in a trend,’ Diei said of the first post, adding that her account was not affiliated with the college and did not even use her real name. 

Her attorney, Greg Greubel, pointed out at the time that WAP had been streamed 93million times in the week that Diei was quoting it.  

Diei said the college ‘never gave specifics’ about what exactly prompted the expulsion threats, only that they violated the school’s code for ‘professionalism’. 

The nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) stepped in to help with her court battle, which Diei described as one of the darkest times of her life.

One post showed a selfie of Diei wearing a low-cut red vest, crimson lipstick and gold eyeshadow with her hair tied up, alongside a sexually-charged caption (shown above) 

Diei said she doesn’t know who lodged the anonymous complaints which sparked the whole saga, but she thinks it could have been ‘jealous’ classmates on her pharmacy course  

‘It was extremely daunting,’ she told DailyMail.com. 

‘When you are in a program like this [the pharmacy graduate scheme], the coursework and the rigor can really break even the strongest of people. 

‘I was under the most stress I have ever been through my entire life. Looking back, it was the absolute worst time of my life. I was so unhappy and scared all of the time.’ 

But Diei secured a happy ending eventually, when the court ruled that the college had violated her First Amendment right to free speech with the expulsion threat. 

Diei graduated from the University of Tennessee in 2023 with a graduate diploma, after previously gaining a biology degree from the University of Chicago in 2015. 

After a spell teaching physics at a charter school, she went back to college in Tennessee to specialize in nuclear pharmacy and handling radioactive materials. 

Last month, after years of battling it out in court with the University of Tennessee, Diei secured the $250,000 settlement. 

‘I’m not going to be blowing it on anything,’ she told DailyMail.com of the winnings. ‘I’m trying to invest some of it so I have passive income.

‘But I’m going to be taking a very much well-deserved vacation. I haven’t decided where yet, but I know it’s going to be somewhere warm and tropical with party vibes.’

‘I was under the most stress I have ever been through. Looking back, it was the absolute worst time of my life. I was so unhappy and scared all of the time,’ Diei said of the lawsuit period

When she filed the lawsuit, Diei has nearly 20,000 Instagram followers and 2,000 on X

Diei added that her ability to talk openly about sex online and in person has also been an asset to her current role as a Walgreens pharmacist. 

‘In the community setting of the pharmacy, we prescribe a lot of medications and people need to be able to get the appropriate information,’ she told DailyMail.com. 

‘One of our biggest sellers is Viagra, which is mostly used to help the male erection.

‘Customers need to feel comfortable discussing that so that I can best advise them… they need to be comfortable discussing their sexual history.’

‘I can be a successful and professional pharmacist as well as a strong woman that embraces her sexuality. The two are not mutually exclusive,’ she added. 

DailyMail.com has reached out to the University of Tennessee for comment. 

University Assistant Vice President of Communications Melissa Tindell said: ‘It is our general practice to refrain from commenting on legal matters.’