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[illuminata]

oops...I was going on info from a newscast yesterday...so I'll rephrase..."including that kid's family in DC".

[diana_prince]

As an educated society, we should try to garner some lessons learned from this tragedy. Once the first shooting occurred, this student was no longer considered potentially dangerous. The shooting rampage could have ended there if proper security measures were in place.

There were warning signs about this particular student, which weren't taken seriously by the school.

Schools are really placed in a double bind when they look at the legal aspects of these types of situations. On the one hand, they face case A, a possible lawsuit for wrongly accusing a student or mislabeling a student who appears to be troubled. On the other hand, case B, they probably will face a lawsuit when it comes to the massacre and how they handled it. Parents will probably call for the resignation of the school officials involved, such as the university president and the campus police chief. In both cases, the school must face the liability of a potential lawsuit. However, in case A, large numbers of innocent people are not dead.  Which liability is better for the university to face, case A or case B?

Universities need to examine their policies and their willingness to accept risk and blame if they are wrong about a potentially dangerous unstable student. I would rather be wrong that I misjudged a student as potentially dangerous and unstable when the student may not be and err on the side of caution, then be wrong about a potentially dangerous student who turns out to be dangerous, and err on the side of large numbers of students and faculty being massacred in a dorm or classroom.

[bfrank]

I think VT is going to face less of a problem with accusations that they failed to deal with a potentially dangerous student than the fact they assumed business as usual on campus even though they knew the gunman who committed the dorm room shootings was still at large.  They locked down the campus last August after a shooting near the campus, so why not after one on campus?

[asleepforyears]

Three totally different points that struck me from this discussion.

Not that I’m excusing the lack of information given to the students, faculty, and staff at VT, but I am wondering how many of your campuses have public address systems in place that could effectively warn campus constituents to stay away in a 2-hour period?  In my memory, when emails were sent over the central “tell everyone” system, I got the email, and an hour later, someone else got the email, even though they were all sent at the same time.  My concern is that perhaps the email was slowed down by the server and the number of recipients.  It is also my belief that actual PA loudspeaker systems are a thing of the past… but I’m not sure.  What do people DO to inform people, and second, is it effective?  Really?

Diana_prince makes a good point, in speaking of the litigiousness of students; if you bar a student attendance until they participate in counseling, depending on your type of institution, you could be sued.  If you DON’T act, and then something terrible happens, then your lack of action with the ‘known-to-be-dangerous’ (in hindsight, as histgradstud says) student is criticized.  You mess with a student’s ‘right’ to attend college (which they get by paying for it and adhering to academic standards) at a public school and you’re sued under the 14th amendment.  At private colleges, you go into contract law… and let’s face it: if there’s one thing administrators are taught to avoid, it’s any lawsuits they can foresee… and rarely do we foresee tragedies of this magnitude (thankfully).  Also, with the vast bureaucratic structures, the system tends to be so un-navigable, I think conflict (via referral) is avoided by faculty members—with good reason—when do they ever see anything come of it?  It’s self-defeating!

Finally, I would like to thank Obscure for the keen and honest things they have said in the past few days.  I definitely don’t want mentally ill (or previously ill) students barred from campus, I think your words have brought greater understanding to everyone reading this discussion. :)

[prytania3]

Forgive me for saying something unpopular, but I don't think universities should admit students who have a history of mental illness. Protection of the many should always take precedence over giving the benefit of the doubt to an individual. There is no constitutional right to a college education.

This may be the dumbest post I've ever come across on the fora.

If universities didn't admit any students who had a history of mental illness, then students would make sure never to get a history. Anyone who had aspirations of going to college wouldn't set foot in a psychologist or psychiatrist's office.

[diana_prince]

Three totally different points that struck me from this discussion.

Not that I’m excusing the lack of information given to the students, faculty, and staff at VT, but I am wondering how many of your campuses have public address systems in place that could effectively warn campus constituents to stay away in a 2-hour period?  In my memory, when emails were sent over the central “tell everyone” system, I got the email, and an hour later, someone else got the email, even though they were all sent at the same time.  My concern is that perhaps the email was slowed down by the server and the number of recipients.  It is also my belief that actual PA loudspeaker systems are a thing of the past… but I’m not sure.  What do people DO to inform people, and second, is it effective?  Really?

People who live within a certain-mile radius of correctional facilities might see law enforcement personnel drilling a mock prison escape. There are signs placed on the curbs that clearly read, "Escaped prisoner," or "emergency response in progress."

When parking garages on college campuses are full, signs are placed blocking the entrance to the garage that read, "FULL."

There are safety and emergency exit maps usually placed in each classroom for natural disasters, such as a tornado.

I would say, use the PA system, contact the local and campus news, alert any campus personnel who might be in positions to block parking garages or streets exiting and entering campus. Contact the local law enforcement personnel and have them enter as many buildings as possible to issue warnings about a shooter at large on campus.  Plus, I think that there should be a shooter drill in place much like a tornado drill, where the staff and faculty understand there is a crisis management team with a plan and a system in place with steps and procedures to follow.

[neutralname]

Forgive me for saying something unpopular, but I don't think universities should admit students who have a history of mental illness. Protection of the many should always take precedence over giving the benefit of the doubt to an individual. There is no constitutional right to a college education.

This may be the dumbest post I've ever come across on the fora.

Yes, astonishingly stupid.  What if we didn't allow faculty with a history of mental illness either?  How many would be left. 

To address the problems of the original post, there's already a large literature on the difficulty of predicting dangerousness in any populations.  The central problem is that you will always get a large number of false positives.  Here's a sketch of the problem.  Suppose you have a population of 10,000 students, and 0.1% (10) of them are dangerous.  Suppose your dangerousness test is 90% accurate (wildly optimistic) and you test all the students.  Then you are will be 10% inaccurate, and so you will predict that 1000 of them are dangerous.  What are you going to do with all those false positives?  You will also still miss 1 of the dangerous students. 

You can tighten up the test to get fewer false positives, but then you will miss more of the dangerous students.  Or you make the test more inclusive to make sure you identify all or nearly all of the actually dangerous students, but then you will get even more false positives.

Take home lesson: we just don't have a way to identify dangerous students in a useful way. 

[diana_prince]

Take home lesson: we just don't have a way to identify dangerous students in a useful way. 

I disagree. There are warning signs that we can look for. We live in a world where we're more concerned about lawsuits or individual rights of one student than we are about the safety and protection of many. That to me is a huge problem. We also live in a world where we question what is "normal" in student behavior and schoolwork, such as an instructor thinking, "Maybe this student does write about macabre topics and killing, but he could be the next Quinton Tarantino. My gut instinct tells me this kid is troubled, but I don't really want to say anything in case I'm wrong."

That's the problem educators deal with today.

[merce]

One of my colleagues and I were talking about our former students.
He had a student who did write very violent and gory pieces. He was worried but was convinced the kid was sweet.
Now the kid has gone. that was 2 years ago.

I've had students who were very strange. A student whose facebook page had MURDER and KILL THEM over hundreds of time. So for example, under favorite book: MURDER, Favorite movie: KILL THEM ALL
etc.
THe picture of said student had blood spattering from various places.
In a response paper to anti-semitic pieces of literature the student suggested it was a good thing to torture Jews and do so publicly so that they might learn to accept the one true Christ.

That one isn't the only creepy student I've had. And I'm in first year out of grad school!!!
I've had plenty of "weird" kids. Youth is about being weird and rebelling against the norm. It's hard to say when a killing spree will come from behavior we've seen again and again.

[prytania3]

"Maybe this student does write about macabre topics and killing, but he could be the next Quinton Tarantino. My gut instinct tells me this kid is troubled, but I don't really want to say anything in case I'm wrong."

That's the problem educators deal with today.

I confess to reading one of his plays, and trust me, he is not the next Quinton Tarantino. That said, the members of the English dept. had referred him to counseling and were keeping an eye on him; however, he hadn't done anything wrong really in the English dept. You can't lock someone up because he is a loner or writes macabre plays poorly.

[neutralname]

Take home lesson: we just don't have a way to identify dangerous students in a useful way. 

I disagree. There are warning signs that we can look for.

But diana_prince, that doesn't accomplish a disagreement.  I agree there are warning signs.  Past violent behavior is the best predictor of future violent behavior.  There are other signs too: violent fantasies, statements of desires to be violent and to harm others, and then weaker signs, such as stange clothing, strange artistic products, and preoccupation with violence.  Nevertheless, my point still stands, these are not useful indicators if you plan to lock all these people up indefinitely, or put them in mental hospitals.  We have emptied nearly all our mental hospitals and turned them into condos. 

[diana_prince]

That one isn't the only creepy student I've had. And I'm in first year out of grad school!!!
I've had plenty of "weird" kids. Youth is about being weird and rebelling against the norm. It's hard to say when a killing spree will come from behavior we've seen again and again.

That's just it, though, "behavior we've seen again and again," isn't necessarily normal behavior.

[merce]

That one isn't the only creepy student I've had. And I'm in first year out of grad school!!!
I've had plenty of "weird" kids. Youth is about being weird and rebelling against the norm. It's hard to say when a killing spree will come from behavior we've seen again and again.

That's just it, though, "behavior we've seen again and again," isn't necessarily normal behavior.

And as I tell my students as they work through their theses: So what?
What is your point?
How does that help us?
What can we get from common behavior not being normal?

[diana_prince]

That one isn't the only creepy student I've had. And I'm in first year out of grad school!!!
I've had plenty of "weird" kids. Youth is about being weird and rebelling against the norm. It's hard to say when a killing spree will come from behavior we've seen again and again.

That's just it, though, "behavior we've seen again and again," isn't necessarily normal behavior.

And as I tell my students as they work through their theses: So what?
What is your point?
How does that help us?
What can we get from common behavior not being normal?

You're still in graduate school, and I've earned my Ph.D. already so there's no need to help me work through a thesis. I taught writing for nearly seven years at the college level, and I didn't ever have a student write about anything such as killings or shooting sprees. I created a positive environment, and I actually couldn't picture myself reading those types of papers. I set some boundaries in my class. Now, maybe some people would consider that limiting their creativity. I didn't see it that way. I also had experience working with seventh graders in special ed classes. If I found them drawing pictures with anything that resembled violence or blood and gore, I would document it and give it to the school psychologist. It's not normal.

[zarathustra]

I really, really, really detest colleagues who pull rank based on a freakin' piece of paper.  Does having a completed PhD really make you superior?