Four days after he asked in class about buying a gun, Illinois State University expelled a 31-year-old Thai student who had been a doctoral student in English for about four years.

According to The Pantagraph, a daily newspaper in Bloomington, Ill., university officials said that the student, Rithichai (Toro) Yibcharoenporn, had a history of confrontations with faculty members and administrators. They said the timing of his explusion, slightly more than a week after the killings at Virginia Tech, was coincidental. “Even if the Virginia Tech incident had not happened, his problems were enough to generate his removal,” said Jay Groves, a spokesman for the university.

But following the student’s question about buying a gun — a question he asked during an exam — the university dismissed Mr. Yibcharoenporn and the university police helped U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents take him into custody for deportation, since his student visa became invalid when he was expelled from the university. —Lawrence Biemiller