Originally Posted by justme

Cat...Just wondering, since you have been in the situation, if you ever looked at the legalities involved. After faculty or administration are advised of the problem, how limited are they, by say privacy laws?
Can a professor who is actually in fear of a student refuse to have that student in the class? In that same vein, would that student have any legal recourse against the professor or does the school shield individuals from liabilty in that case?
Just thought it would be interesting to hear from someone who is in the game.

Originally Posted by Mom_Adams

Cat's Meow, I disagree. There is a LOT more colleges can do that would prevent catastrophes such as this.

College campuses are like small communities only in the geographical sense. But, every one of them still tries to paint this false image of being some utopian village of higher learning in order to beat the competition and attract more bright eyed students. But the fact of the matter is that colleges today are places where radicalism, extremism, and the right to be a fanatic are taught in every classroom and where more and more students are taking medication for depression or turning to alcohol or drugs to deal with what’s being doled out to them

Even after a student is considered “troubled” they want to deal with it at a level that maintains that utopian village image by handling everything on campus. It’s like thousands of little Las Vegas’s with the motto “what happens here stays here” until something happens they cannot contain, like 33 people getting gunned down. Then they go on the defensive and run over themselves trying to reject any responsibility the school had for sweeping some sick kid under the carpet. The same exact thing happened with the kid that blew himself up at the University of Oklahoma. That situation could have ended up costing a LOT more than 33 lives.

Colleges and universities all over this country need to stop worrying so much about their image and start treating criminal and dangerous behavior like real communities do. After reading what Virginia Tech faculty and staff knew about this kid well before this happened, instead of just referring him to a counselor and putting a note in his academic file, they should have packed him off to the local psychiatric hospital for emergency evaluation and not let him back on campus... ever.

Despite what anyone says, campus police do have the authority to issue an emergency order of detention (EOD) on a student if there is reason to believe he/she may pose a threat to him/herself or anyone around them. It’s time colleges started doing the right thing for their student/communities because the days of claiming these schools are utopian villages are over.

Originally Posted by justme

This time it was a school. What about a crowded mall? An amusement park? Any number of open access events?
How do you prevent someone intent on harming others from doing it? You can't. You can try to prepare for the worst, but an old saying is still true...Shit happens. Unless you are prepared to close down society, you can't stop every tragedy. IMHO.

Originally Posted by ladyofmts

It boils down no one wants to be liable or held accountabe. There's a paper trail now of "would've could've should've's" that the lawyer's are going to have a field day out of.

Originally Posted by cat's meow

It depends on the legal department and how they perceive the problem quite honestly, it depends on individuals and how they administer the law. We had another incident involving a person who had to get asked to leave the building I work in this morning (I do not kid you, a crazy week).

Originally Posted by TheHarshTruth

Which university is that?



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._by_enrollment

Originally Posted by cat's meow

You are making some very wide genalizations here.

I have worked on several very large campuses, both public and private instituations...I was also stationed at West Point which is both campus and military installation. The minimum enrollment of those civilian institutions is 16,000 and the top was 52,000. Every corporation and university deals with image and it really does come down to what that particular school (or corp) wants to do. I once was on tour and played a concert at Long Island University in Brooklyn and the whole school is surrounded by fencing with barbed wire at the top where you are only let in and out of places like the loading docks with a security person. It is a closed campus. The contrast is a venue like Blacksburg VA (VT) where they are isolated in a college town where the town and the business's there do not experience any great deal of crime or violence. So with that last statement your view is rather disingenuous because why would a campus up the security in a 'college town' which is isolated in the first place? That town does not experience crime. I was doing a guest lecture appearnce at Coe College in Iowa last year, there is very little security they have to deal with because that little town they sit in is very low crime. You are sort of comparing the wrong things here I think.

Every campus I know of has university police and gereally they are good at responding (I saw it happen this morning in my building).

Originally Posted by ladyofmts

Geez..Harsh...don't call Sam out on the carpet. Nice to see MSU only has come up by 5,000 since I left.

Originally Posted by TheHarshTruth

Which university is that?



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._by_enrollment