I had posted last night saying that the situation at Virginia Tech was very sad. At that point I am not sure what else to say except that...but, the person who we have had problems with at our campus sent another long winded email today and ALARM BELLS went off fast today. I truly hope they take this seriously because the person emailing us (me and others) has some problems and needs to be confronted by administration.

OK...so who is to blame and can educational institutions be better prepared?

First, they did interview one of the professors that did speak one on one with this Korean kid; she did do the right thing. She really did as much as she could legally and did did refer the student to counseling (this kid needed it bad, pulled from school and/or put on meds). Like I have done with problems like this, you have to refer to a counseler, dept. chair, or dean. If it is a problem with a student stealing or cheating you have to deal with the legal office or the U police department. In the time I have been teaching at this level (since 1995) I have encountered about 10 problems ranging from whacked out behavoir to fights to stealing to forged checks. This has been at three different higher education institutions and the range of how each school handles it really depends on the school itself and the Dean or the person where the 'buck needs to stop.'

Far too many times (I have seen it first hand) a school is way too scared to get in legal trouble (at the upper level). Professors DO NOT put up with bad or suspicious behavior, they do report it. When things go bad it has to do with administration, legal, or counseling services. Out of the times I have dealt with problems only two were handled properly and it was when an administrator took the responsibility and had the 'balls' to back up a professor/teacher. The situation I described in the other post about this subject(?), the reaction was a fire alarm fire this morning after what happened at V Tech.

Some last observations:

• campuses are very big and spread out, fences and lock downs do not work, all the media speculation about this is total BS. They are in la la land; campuses are like anywhere and you call 911 as fast as you can.
• counselers need to be responsive when this happens and be willing to be pro-active ASAP when a professor reports out of control behavior.

Cat; I hope your situation is resolved soon and the proper authorities are called in. I graduated from Michigan State University in 1990. At the time, there were 40,000 students on campus. Realistically, an entire lockdown then or now is just not logisitically or physically possibly unless you gated MSU. I also started thinking about when I lived in the dorms, sure, we had an RA, but that was it, no other protection, except campus police, and this was in Lansing, MI. I think it will have to be mandated that each individual building go into lockdown. Communication is the key and it was lacking. It's sad.


http://www.msu.edu/maps/

__________________
Ephesians 5:15

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyR41JbpL_g

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.

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.

Right…lets turn guidance counselors and school administrators in to the Gestapo.
The prospect for abuse and subsequent litigation is greatly over-looked on your part.
Sure that plan may catch some, but it is not foolproof, and psychos will slip through the cracks, then what do we have? A policy the can never be reversed, tighter controls and intimidation of the populace. People will be reporting others because they sense something different about another person. Secret Police, a student body marching in “Goose Step.”

__________________
"If you don't know where you are going, you will probably wind up somewhere else."
- Laurence J. Peter

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.

How many lawsuits do you expect will result from this situation at Virginia Tech? Thirty three people were murdered by a student that teachers had refused to teach, students had refused to be in the same classroom with, and that virtually everyone who knew thought he was psychotic and dangerous.

And the best you can come up with for not locking him up in a psychiatric unit where he might have gotten help is that it's not foolproof and would open them to litigation or could turn guidance counselors and school administrators in to the Gestapo?

You know, there are phobias and then there are very real reasons to fear something. What I'm talking about is reoccurring evidence of an epidemic of psychiatric illnesses and social problems that is invading schools at every level in this country at an alarming rate and that isn't being dealt with realistically. What you have is a phobia.

I didn't claim they could prevent every incident like this. But there is a LOT more than could have and should have been done and wasn't. And there will be more incidences like this one because people are so willing to write it off as something that just happens.

Never implied just writing it off. Investigate and learn from it.
What do you see that LEGALLY could have been done that wasn't? Of course there will be lawsuits. The US is famous for its litigation. Over anything. Doesn't mean the suits have any credibility.
Should a professor be able to "report" a kid he doesn't like as being a "threat"?
What if a professor doesn't like the lyrics some black kid writes for a hip-hop- song. Counseling for the kid?
How about a professor alarmed by a paper supporting gun rights? Required counseling?
You honestly can't see the problems such an approach would create?

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.

__________________
Ephesians 5:15

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyR41JbpL_g