I understand your concerns. My intent was not to get comments for my writing but to get thoughts on what this incident says about resources for faculty (including graduate instructors). You're right. I could have framed this better. If you think it doesn't belong here than by all means delete it or move it.
Thanks for the clarification. Since the intent of this area is to talk about our health issues and those of our students and how we juggle them, there are certainly some things that resonate for me in this story with regard to doing my job. There's another thread right now over in the Classroom forum about a student behaving inappropriately and aggressively, and the ways that universities seem poorly equipped to deal with them. I,too, have seen over and over that many or most systems are not able to deal with individuals with mental illness. It's not just campus police, either--there was a case just last year when the NYC police tasered an individual who was mentally ill, and he fell off the roof of a building to his death.
Part of the problem seems to be the difficulty sorting out to what degree an individual is entitled to protection under the law from discrimination based upon disabilities, versus the rights of other individuals (faculty, classmates, community members) to be protected from illegal behavior that is triggered by mental illness. the standard for what constitutes "menacing" behavior and "harrassment," for example, is pretty random and applied very inconsistently. As a faculty member, this means that I am asked to manage an anxiety-provoking and anti-educational dynamic within my classroom while the assorted authorities figure out what they can do legally. Not fun for anyone involved--including the person struggling to make his/her way through the system while wrestling with a significant disability.
