What can be done to protect faculty members from potentially dangerous students?
Ultimately, nothing. Or so it seems.
Teachers are all, in varying degrees, personally vulnerable for three reasons:
First, it is our job to demand difficult tasks of people and judge the results in ways that can have consequences for their future. Sometimes we are called upon to challenge students' beliefs in ways they may deem offensive.
Second, we cannot pursue disciplinary action within a college unless we are willing to accept the possibility of personal retaliation by the student outside the college's area of jurisdiction, off the campus, or after graduation. Moreover, disciplinary action against one student does nothing to restrain the actions of a disgruntled student's allies, possibly after a long interval.
Third, it is increasingly difficult for us to maintain our personal privacy because of the circulation of information on the Internet.
For all of those reasons, many professors live in the shadow of the possibility of retaliation from disgruntled students whose actions may range from minor vandalism to deadly violence. The Virginia Tech massacre, in which 32 students and faculty members were killed by a disturbed student, is only the most visible incident in a situation that has existed for a long time and which now, perhaps, merits more serious consideration.
Major tragedies naturally stand out in our memory, but how many thousands of smaller incidents take place every year? Institutions keep no records about what occurs off the campus, and faculty members are reluctant to look like victims or complainers.
In all of the teaching positions I held before my present one, I was advised never to give students personal information: "Don't let them know where you live. Don't give them your home phone number. And keep your number unlisted. You never know who is going to be in your class. Some students develop irrational hostilities toward teachers. Use your street smarts, and don't make yourself vulnerable."
That was probably good advice, even if only one in 100 students is a potential problem. But if you teach a couple hundred students a year -- and thousands of students over a career -- then it seems only a matter of time before you run into a student who might be dangerous.
I now teach at a medium-size, church-affiliated, liberal-arts college in one of the safest cities in the Midwest. We are encouraged to have cordial relationships with our students, including inviting them to our houses for informal classes and gatherings. It sounds idyllic, and, for the most part, it is. Our students are almost universally polite, conscientious, and hard-working.
But even here, sometimes one encounters a student with serious behavioral problems. And it is almost inevitable that that student will be the one who forces us into an adversarial relationship because of some combination of poor performance, class disruptions, and honor-code violations.
I have one such student right now, enrolled in a required course I teach. Like many students, he seems to resent having to take it and, from the beginning of the semester, has radiated such negative energy that it nearly stifles the possibility of affable classroom discussion.
Until recently, his submitted work has been average, earning him B's. But after earning a C on a major assignment that he did not even complete, he demanded a meeting with me after class.
After all of the other students had left, he said in a loud, menacing voice, "You gave me a C. That is unacceptable!"
I asked him what he meant by "unacceptable," and he said, "I do not get C's." I explained that he had not completed the assignment, but his demeanor was an obvious attempt at physical intimidation. I offered him the chance to rewrite the assignment. Unsatisfied with my proposal, he made a few more disrespectful remarks and left.
Now I am waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Nothing can be done, apart from trying to find out if his behavior is part of a pattern of documented incidents. There was no explicitly stated threat, and -- though it seems cowardly and unprincipled to say so -- I worry that any further action on my part will provoke retaliation, either from the student or his network of friends.
During the past seven years, there have been several incidents of vandalism at our house in the country about 10 minutes from the college. Our mailbox has been destroyed twice, incidents I have written off as teenage pranks. We frequently hear gunshots in the night, but there are a lot of hunters in the country who shoot at animals and other targets from their cars. About once a year, we find bags of garbage split and scattered on our property, but people dispose of things that way around here without personal malice, I assume.
Some things can't be dismissed, however. One night I heard a chainsaw running, opened a window, and realized someone was in our front yard, cutting down one of our trees. I came out with a flashlight, and the chainsaw-wielder ran to the passenger side of a pickup truck, and the two people roared away. I didn't get the license number; the car's lights were off. The next day a police officer took notes and said nothing could be done.
After that, we installed more outdoor lighting and adopted a German shepherd, and I bought a 12-gauge shotgun and learned how to use it. There is no way I am going out in the middle of the night to investigate intruders again with nothing but a flashlight in my hands.
This is all a little more than I bargained for when I became an English professor. I don't think I am a particularly hard taskmaster or a harsh grader of my students' work. And I generally get very good student evaluations. But it seems that for a growing number of students, a C or even a B- is not an inducement to work harder or seek advice; it is grounds for an aggressive response.
Such students force you to decide how much you really value your integrity as a teacher. We didn't go into education because we wanted to be tough guys; it's usually quite the opposite: Most of us dread physical confrontation. And so those aggressive, and even dangerous, students get passed along, learning that intimidation and implied threats will get them what they want in life.
It's easy to create rationalizations: "Just give him a B, and move on. Give your energy to the students who really want to learn. Besides, everyone knows the B+ is the new C, and the A- is the new B. It's not your problem. Tell them to grade themselves, or give them all A's, and get to work on your next book."
But all of that makes me wonder what is going on from the students' perspectives, since incidents like the one I just experienced seem to be increasing throughout academe, at least based on extensive anecdotal information.
Is it the convergence of exorbitant tuition costs, the entitlement of the self-esteem generation, the vulgarity and anti-intellectualism of our culture, the troubles faced by public education, the declining respect accorded to teachers, the extreme competitive intensity of college sports, the unsupervised use of psychological medications, decades of inflated grades and declining standards, the pressure to gain access to graduate school and jobs by maintaining the now common 4.0 grade-point average?
It seems worth mentioning that the only time I have worried about disgruntled students is in the required general-education courses I teach. Even at a liberal-arts college that advertises well-roundedness, many students think they are being trained for jobs; they do not automatically know that they are agreeing to take courses in history, literature, and philosophy, among other subjects, that may not obviously make them successful sales reps.
Some students feel they have been forced to get through a dozen years of disagreeable education, only to arrive as adults at a college that makes them takes courses they do not want to take. Or perhaps they have come to college only to play a sport, and the classes are just an inconvenience. Others are being coerced by their parents to attend college when they are not motivated or ready. The last thing any of those students wants is a professor who takes his or her course seriously.
What that means is that courses sometimes contain a critical mass of students who do not wish to be there, who are not interested in the material, who drive down the level of discourse, and who openly hate the professor, particularly if he or she challenges them.
Such students become masters of the art of approaching the line of the actionable. They don't say, "I am going to kill you." They just glare at you with hatred every day for four months and find every imaginable way to undermine your authority and the value of the class for everyone.
At least my recent experiences have given me a more visceral empathy with students who have the courage to come forward with legitimate charges of sexual harassment or racism. Unfortunately, college is no refuge from the ugliness that permeates our society. But what can be done?
Perhaps we should abandon the notion that everyone should go to college after high school. Perhaps we should stop holding people hostage for 16 years before they can do what they want. But, as we all know, our colleges have too many seats that need to be filled, and a high-school diploma can no longer assure an employer of anything. So students are told they must have a college degree, even if they do not want one, even if it costs more than they can easily afford, and even if they think it has no relevance to their future job.
It's no wonder that some of them hate us -- or that many teachers become so guarded and aloof.
