April 20, 2007

English Professors Formed 'Task Force' to Help Cho

As many as eight faculty members in Virginia Tech’s English department formed what one called a “task force” to figure out how to help Cho Seung-Hui, the troubled English major who killed 32 people and himself on Monday, The New York Times says in Friday’s editions.

The department’s faculty members and students “appear to have worked harder than anyone to intervene in his life,” the Times says, because so many of them had read his writings and recognized that the levels of anger in them were extraordinary. In at least two instances the faculty members tried to warn Virginia Tech officials about Mr. Cho.

The newspaper quotes Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the department, as saying: “Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it’s creative or if they’re describing things, if they’re imagining things or just how real it might be. But we’re all alert to not ignore things like this.” —Lawrence Biemiller

Comments

1. I applaud the faculty efforts but unfortunately they were way out of their league and should have relinquished this ‘case’ to Student Health Svcs.

   — Doreen    Apr 20, 08:22 AM    #

2. What credentials entitle D to determine this? Everyone wants to say that someone “should” have done something different. Cho was seen by a variety of professionals, but Constitutional due process rights and the system of mental health care, eviscerated as it has been by federal and state cuts, made it nearly impossible to involuntarily restrain Cho. This would be the same in most places around the country.

   — Eric    Apr 20, 09:01 AM    #

3. I’ve worked in a University for 20 years and Cho’s behavior would not have been tolerated there. There are ways to deal with this at the Administration level with the aid of trained/experienced professionals. Based on what I’ve read, I am inclined to believe that the Administration at VTech as well as their campus police dept leave a lot to be desired.

   — Doreen    Apr 20, 09:40 AM    #

4. The only person who pulled any triggers was Cho Seung-Hui. Criticizing Virginia Tech’s administration and campus police is an unproductive displacement of blame. I don’t think that any of us, no matter how much we practice and update our crisis response procedures, could know for certain how to respond to an event as specific and unimaginable as this.

   — Ann    Apr 20, 10:05 AM    #

5. Put the blame where it belongs: On the system that failed to tag the gunman as mentally unstable and thus allowed him to buy guns. On the gun lobby, which immediately responds to any such incident with an outpouring of the old “Guns don’t kill people” line. On our elected officials, who should make it illegal for ordinary citizens to own ANY handgun. Rifles and shotguns should satisfy hunters…and be harder to conceal.

   — Susan    Apr 20, 10:38 AM    #

6. Cho would never have had the opportunity to pull the trigger on the campus where I work.

   — Doreen    Apr 20, 10:43 AM    #

7. If we’re going to put the blame where it belongs, then put it on the person who did this. Not the lawmakers, not the school officials, not the counselors. People are looking for an explanation for this, and are finding it in Cho’s psychological history. This is a mistake. Lots of people have psychological problems. It so happens that Cho had psychological problems AND was a cold-blooded killer.

   — Dylan    Apr 20, 11:45 AM    #

8. What I fail to understand is how it was possible for Cho’s suitemates to see him day in and day out, realizing that he never spoke to anyone, and fail to force the issue with him, with counsellors, with someone. I know everyone is busy with his/her own life, but some situations are too bizarre to ignore.

   — Marta    Apr 20, 12:09 PM    #

9. Doreen, please do explain how your university has eliminateds the possiblity of a determined insane person from opening fire on your campus. Expelling him isn’t sufficient. Involuntary commitment has time limits. If you’ve got a plan that gurantees nothing like this could happen, 3,000 colleges and unviersities would love to know what it is.

   — Ruth    Apr 20, 12:16 PM    #

10. The English Dept. was punching way out of its weight class. This was so clearly a matter for mental health professionals. If anything, such a “task force” shielded others from the enormity of this man’s troubles. Band-Aids by humanists—c’mon, people.

    — Kelly    Apr 20, 01:03 PM    #

11. It looks to me like the campus police were the only ones who legally knew that Cho was a danger to himself and others. Under those circumstances, shouldn’t there be a blanket police policy to “lockdown” and notify the community as soon as any incident occurs, as long as they know such a person is on campus? Neither the English Dept. nor the mental health professionals have the traction to do it.

    — Andy    Apr 20, 01:34 PM    #

12. #1 Our university does not tolerate sexual harrassment. #2 If a faculty member threatens to quit if a student is not withdrawn from her class, Administration would tune in immediately, since threats such as this from faculty has never occurred.

    — Doreen    Apr 20, 02:12 PM    #

13. In response to the VTech Massacre the University I am employed at created a new Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response to further improve the University’s ability to deliver a coordinated and effective response to catastrophic events. We’ve never had a catastrophy. We don’t fool around!

    — Doreen    Apr 20, 02:20 PM    #

14. All you people complaining that the English dept was out of its league and should’ve “relinquished” Cho to the mental health system should do your homework before posting. They did the very thing you’re complaining about. Blame the mental health system, if you like, and leave the d@mn profs out of it.

    — Abroad    Apr 20, 02:55 PM    #

15. Sadly, all of you who blame everyone but Cho are doing exactly what Cho did: blame everyone but Cho.

    — UK prof    Apr 20, 02:58 PM    #

16. Doreen, try and have some sensitivity instead of being high and mighty. No uni operating under the EEOC, including VT, “tolerate[s] sexual harassment.” Easy for you to command others not to “fool around”—when, as you yourself make clear, your uni only JUST created the catastrophe office. VT had never had a “catastrophy” before, either. Just because someone in your class is a creep, even a harassment-y one, there’s no way to know they’ll go on a shooting spree. Come on.

    — Charlie T    Apr 20, 03:24 PM    #

17. I read one of Cho’s creative writing projects online at thesmokinggun.com. Honestly, in my class I would have dismissed it as a poor Quentin Tarantino/ sadistic horror movie rip-off and thought nothing further of it.

    — V    Apr 20, 05:10 PM    #

18. Abroad, put your homework on the table. The professors should share the blame for this tragedy. A “task force” is precisely what Cho did not need. It created the illusion that something was being done when in fact it was an uncoordinated effort on the part of humanities professors who know little or nothing about psychological issues as they manifest in living subjects. I do find fault with the mental health system—it’s atrocious. But let’s not pretend the English Dept. actually did something constructive.

    — kelly    Apr 20, 06:13 PM    #

19. UK prof, I gather from your cluelessness about Cho’s psychological condition, that you are unaware that Cho’s act was self-punishing. The evidence is pretty clear that Cho blamed Cho. He put 2 bullets in his head. His rhetoric of blame was a dissociative attempt to displace that self-hatred and self-blame.

    — kelly    Apr 20, 06:18 PM    #

20. Kelly, the English Profs repeatedly and vociferously tried to get Cho to go to Counseling (a fact left out of the original post). In fact, they DID recognize that they were not psychologists and tried to get him to get counseling. It’s not like they were putting him on the couch themselves. The “task force” referred to earlier simply (understatement) tried to get Cho the help he so obviously needed. Your obvious disdain for a group of “humanists” “out of its weight class” isn’t exactly constructive, either.

    — john    Apr 20, 06:53 PM    #

21. Doreen & Kelly, please read the whole news item: “In at least two instances the faculty members tried to warn Virginia Tech officials about Mr. Cho.” We don’t know all the details of their efforts, but it seems proper professional actions were taken by some. If there is any negligence, it should be determined through a more careful study than we can do from some news reports.

    — Tom    Apr 20, 07:49 PM    #

22. A student like Cho would never have been tolerated at my univeristy. Enough said.

    — Pat    Apr 20, 08:27 PM    #

23. It seems to me (to add my two cents) that the English Dept Profs in this case saw the red flags and tried to engage the right people outside of their department but for whatever reason this transfer of concern did not happen as it needed to; if you have so many faculty raising the same concern someone should have listened. To me there are three main questions to ask: 1. Why didn’t Cho’s mental history come into consideration as he purchased the handguns? 2. How did Cho stay on campus and in class after multiple ‘MAJOR’ red flags were raised like starting a fire in his dorm room, stalking incidents, and the Profs input, and 3. Why didn’t the Public Safety folks react with more speed? At the very least if they didn’t have the suspect and the weapon there should have been law enforcement officers flooding the area around the original shooting and fanning out from there making his movements more difficult while sending a message to the campus community that something was not right.

    — Chris    Apr 20, 10:00 PM    #

24. Kelly: Do more reading up on the facts and less typing.

    — Abroad    Apr 21, 05:10 AM    #

25. Kelly: thanks for the laughs. First of all, I’m clearly referring to the video Cho filmed of himself. Say “self-hatred” all you want; sure, he hated himself—and everybody else. Secondly, your “rhetoric of jargon” makes me hope you aren’t going to be doing clinical work. Say “self-punishing” all you want. Say “rhetoric of blame” all you want. He murdered 32 people.

    — UK Prof    Apr 21, 06:09 AM    #

26. Cho was unstable, but I whether he was alienated by being referred to through a codeword, isolated in his classes, and even kicked out of one class.

    — thomas    Apr 21, 06:37 AM    #

27. Are you even aware that Cho was institutionalized, Kelly? Yet you still want to blame an English dept? If you are in the mental health profession, I hope you don’t encourage your clients to feel like victims rather than agents, which post #19 suggests is your tack. Also, you obviously don’t know the professors you’re maligning. I do, and I find your comments are as breathtakingly offensive as they are ignorant.

    — Charlie T    Apr 21, 07:00 AM    #

28. As a past student at VT, I am extremely sympathetic to the students. We need to do a soul searching and figure out a way to minimize the risk of future incidents.

    Meanwhile, as a current professor and a university employee, I am also sympathetic to high education institutions in general and to VT in particular.

    We have a very limited access to information. I do not even have access to my students’ grades in other classes. Let alone their mental conditions.

    The bottom line is that few people have the power AND the interest to connect all the dots and prevent such a tragic incident.

    Professors’ authority has been significantly eroded over time by the emerging “customer” relationship bewteen professors and students. In some cases, we are not trying to teach students. We are trying to make them happy, in a way, as entertainers. This changing relationship will become an increasing challenge to higher education.

    Furthermore, we can not ingore the big picture. People are certainly affected by the war and the gun culture. In terms of gun regulation, the U.S. is certainly an outlier as it is on the Iraq War. Unfortunately, there are still people that worship power, cruelty, and brutality.

    — Zhou    Apr 21, 08:16 AM    #

29. hey kelly, evidence?! have you watched the video that was on NBC? he did not blame himself, not even for killing himself. he blamed society. and considering how working-class va tech is, his indictments of people driving luxury cars etc is absurd. i sure never saw a lexus on our campus. hey kelly, task force means ‘they talked about it amongst themselves to find out what the legal options were.’ if you know so much about psych, try adding some legal knowledge to your vast store of irrelevant unhelpful info. thanks.

    — hokie alumna!    Apr 21, 08:24 AM    #

30. Although Cho’s parents are not to be blamed for this terrible act, they must have known quite a lot about his behavior but, coming from another culture, not being part of maistream “POP“American culture, they did not know how to separate “normal” youth alienation from craziness. They probably thought that their son’s behavior was another way of “being American”, although somewhat extreme, and did not push him to undergo serious treatment. Many inmigrants do not understand their children’s behavior once the young generation adopts the new culture. A Tarantino film is a perfect example of craziness turned into “art”.

    — Alicia    Apr 21, 09:52 AM    #

31. What about the RA living in Cho’s dorm hallway? This individual should monitor the overall wellbeing of all the students under his/her care. Undergrad RA’s are ill-equipped for such duty. Universities should hire more mature RA’s, e.g. grad students, who can provide such supervision not as peers but as in loco parentis.

    — Robin    Apr 21, 11:22 AM    #

32. Thomas: HE is the one who kept calling himself Question Mark.

    As for people being nice to him or not, it seems whenever people addressed him he wouldn’t answer (i.e., his neighbors back home on the street). He only liked communicating in hostile ways (prank calling), etc.

    — Carlene    Apr 21, 12:12 PM    #

33. Looking at the information available in the news, it seems like the English Dept (of whom only women have been named in the news stories) were extremely concerned; the administration and campus scecurity (of whom only men have been named) felt they could not act.

    The reactions seem fairly gender based, but the shooter’s male suite-mates were concerned, very very concerned, and monitored his actions in an attempt to protect female students.

    I agree with those who say that only the shooter was responsible for his actions. However, I wish that the English Dept’s concerns had been taken more seriously by the men to whom they took these concerns.

    — Karen    Apr 21, 01:08 PM    #

34. Carlene:

    I placed a telephone call to a department several times. They didn’t respond. I called again several times. They didn’t respond. I called again several times. Finally, someone responded after my question had already been answered, and I hung up quickly after informing the caller of this. The caller told an acquaintance that I was abrupt and antisocial. I wasn’t given the opportunity to point out that the department had delayed answering my calls for 2 months. We have the department’s account of how they reached out, but Cho’s account is missing here.

    — thomas    Apr 21, 02:28 PM    #

35. As a member of the VT English Dept, I can tell you all that, basically, kelly’s position is correct. Unfortunately, the so-called task force served as a buffer between Cho and the administration, which might have done something if our department had not created the illusion that something was being done in a more direct way. I am saddened by our department’s current fear of litigation and its denial of responsibility in this terrible event.

    — VT Prof    Apr 21, 02:32 PM    #

36. First off, thanks for your candor, VT Prof. I too am deeply saddened by the entire event, and by a department’s missteps in preventing this tragedy.

    Some elaborations of points I’ve already expressed:
    I should say that it is interesting that UK prof is laughing as s/he writes about homicide. Such a confession provides a clue into his/her character (or lack thereof).

    I can state unequivocally that had someone like Cho been enrolled at my university, produced writings of a graphically violent nature, and telegraphed his mental condition in the many ways he did, he would not have remained a member of the university community following direct efforts to manage his care. I am currently a Dean in a medical school, having served for over 30 years in both departments of psychology and the school of medicine (which, for what it is worth, is a top-three school in the US). It does not surprise me, nor does it surprise any of my colleagues (some of whom have been on interviewed in the national media), that an English Dept. had the hubris to imagine it could somehow keep an eye on Cho. As a scholar and clinician who has published extensively in the areas of social deviance, criminal justice, and the personality of psychopathy, and who is an instructor in what is commonly known as criminal profiling at the FBI Academy in Quantico, VA, I base my assessment of Cho on the clear evidence that this event was preventable. Is the English Dept. to blame for 33 deaths (I purposefully include Cho in that number)? Yes; its missteps are one link in a chain of failures. The bottom line is: Cho was failed along with many many others who suffer from inadequate diagnosis, care, and followup.

    — kelly    Apr 21, 03:32 PM    #

37. The failures are absolutely nothing unusual, Kelly. And, frankly, as the former spouse of a mentally ill person who spent considerable time in a well-ranked university psych clinic and outpatient program, I can tell you that the psychiatric staff overestimates vastly both its ability to notice serious problems with patients and its ability to treat successfully. (With concomitant dismissal and diagnosis of family members who keep popping up and saying, “There’s a serious problem, please help.” Only to find out later that — guess what? — there was a serious problem.) Forgive me if I am skeptical that under the care you would have ordered for Cho, this spree or something similar would have been averted.

    Your blame of the English faculty is precisely the kind of attitude I encountered when trying to get help for my husband. I went in, as they did, begging for help, explaining that I was not competent to help and did not want to inadvertantly harm him by trying to do work I was not qualified to do. I was told I was overinvolved and enabling, and directed to back off. However, no one on staff stepped up to help, and before long he was hospitalized again. I went through a few iterations of this before recognizing that all I was doing was earning myself a dossier, and learned to keep my mouth shut and leave the MH system to its crazy self. My ex’s illness continues to damage our family but all I can do at this point is try to mitigate the fallout.

    I hope you will change your attitude.

    — huha    Apr 21, 05:07 PM    #

38. huha,
    It is regrettable that “no one on staff stepped up to help” your former spouse. I think we can agree that no one “stepped up to help” Cho. But I believe you have misconstrued my point: at our university, and at many other top institutions I could name, a team of mental health professionals would have been compelled to intervene.

    I would submit that the fact that I have to convince people that an English Department “task force” is an inappropriate (and dangerous) alternative to mental health treatment is indicative of precisely what attitudinal obstacles to effective health care are in place. So, thank you, huha, for exemplifying that.

    — kelly    Apr 21, 08:44 PM    #

39. No, I never said that the English Dept “task force” was an appropriate alternative to MH services. I said that English faculty asked for psych help for Cho and got as much help as I got for my husband. In fact they asked university mental healthcare providers for help.

    Clearly you are not aware of rules governing academic faculty’s ability to remove people like Cho from their classes. They cannot simply tell the student to leave. (See threads from the last few months in the fora on this topic.) Faced with nonresponsive admin, MH services, and police on one side, and academic penalties on the other, they did what sane people do: They tried to fix things on their own as best they could, and, not surprisingly, failed. Only to be sharply attacked by a member of the MH community that failed to step up in the first place.

    Families with mentally ill members go through similar exercises routinely. We try to get psych help, saying, “Please, we don’t know what this is, please help;” help fails to arrive; and faced with an intolerable situation we try to fix it on our own. After which psych professionals tell us sharply that we had no business meddling, even going so far as to decide we have some sort of pathology driving us to do it. Rather than the fact that we, like the English faculty, are stuck with these people, and must find some way keep their illnesses from playing hell with our lives and classrooms.

    I’m glad that your university MH professionals would’ve been compelled to intervene. However, given my experience with that sort of professional care, I am guessing that unless posing a danger is grounds for expulsion (I find no such rule here), sooner or later the English faculty would’ve found themselves trying to cope with Cho again several days a week. And I would be very surprised if his psych services extended to daily monitoring fine-grained enough enough to stop his problems being dumped in faculty laps.

    I think perhaps you should try a more self-critical read on why people who must deal with the mentally ill attempt amateur psychiatry, even when they know they are not qualified.

    — huha    Apr 21, 09:51 PM    #

40. “Amateur psychiatry”: thank you for supplying that term. When wedded with your brand of uninformed skepticism, the practice of “amateur psychiatry” becomes a formidable barrier to effective mental health provision. Again, I thank you for clarifying how that might operate in some cases.

    Yet we are, after all, discussing the case of Cho, not your former spouse.

    I’ll add parenthetically that, in both posts, I note you’ve made reference to your being pathologized. It is fascinating to me that someone who talks about being “more self-critical” should be so oblivious to her own agenda. I suspect that the Seinfeld episode in which Elaine is forced to go from doctor to doctor because of some comments regarding her status as a difficult patient must have struck quite a chord with you.

    — kelly    Apr 21, 11:00 PM    #

41. I’m so sad to read these postings. There is nothing productive here.

    God bless this broken world, and all of us—the broken creatures in it.

    — anne    Apr 21, 11:33 PM    #

42. Kelly:

    First, if the English Dept. is one link in the chain of events leading to this tragedy, I would like to know if you consider Cho a link in this chain as well. And does he carry more or less responsibility than the English department for the 33 murders (I purposefully include Cho’s as well)?

    Second, I think the UKprof was laughing at your use of psycho-jargon and not at the homicides.

    Finally, while clearly Cho should have been under care for his mental illness and this may have (we can’t be certain!) prevented this tragedy, we must also recognize that there is a deplorable trend towards obsessing over one’s own sense of being a victim in our society, and Cho’s rantings are the extreme manifestation of this. When people spend all their time thinking about how they’ve been wronged, they lose their ability to empathize with other people and see the way that others might be victims as well. Cho may have been delusional and sociopathic, but for the rest of the population, the acceptance by society of shifting blame to everything but oneself encourages us to abandon personal responsibility altogether – whether it be for murder, or child-abuse or just being unpleasant. We do make choices about our actions. The field of mental healthcare contributes to this trend, particularly through the use of nonsensical jargon that amounts to saying little more than “Cho said he blamed everyone else, but really he blamed himself.” I am at a loss to how this leads you to conclude that really we ought to blame the VT English dept. It does make you sound smart though.

    — Kate    Apr 22, 12:23 AM    #

43. I have read that Cho was in deed diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder at eight years of age… but no intervention took place. It wasn’t autism that killed people in Virginia Tech but an individual that had exhibited symptoms of a learning disability at a young age and the people that came in contact with all the years in school did nothing to intervene. Why ..because he was smart, a loner and Korean….. and probably because his own family didn’t accept the diagnosis (this isn’t so unusual is it?)

    I think it is wrong to deny that Cho exhibited autism traits… It is not autism that killed people but this individual Cho who never received help or interventions for years….......

    This is so important for parents to remember and a lesson for all people who try to deny children services/support or say they are too smart to receive services at all… even though they have a diagnosis. All the years that Cho was in school, all the teachers that had in class didn’t see that he had a disability and did nothing speaks volumes to me. It is not so unusual to hear about kids that are smart, shy, lacking social skills that continue to get pushed through the system for a myriad of reasons…...schools don’t want to provide services, parents don’t want to accept the diagnosis, parents don’t know their rights under law for interventions, and some parents have issues that compound getting help for their own child…

    If we don’t accept that Cho was diagnosed with autism and learn from this, we are compounding the problem of getting help for thousands of children now and in the future. While I admit that children on the autism spectrum are not usually violent, keep in mind this young man was someone who never had intervention and who knows what it was like for him to deal with day to day issues..which I am certain most people didn’t even know as he didn’t share his feels.. How many kids on the autism spectrum have challenges with sharing their feelings?

    Remember this individual Cho does not represent Autism – he was diagnosed with it and no one did anything to intervene.

    Can you imagine being diagnosed with cancer when you are eight-years old and then no one does anything for years, even though they suspect something is wrong? Then you “suddenly” do things from rage…because you are dying inside and no one did a thing to help.

    I am not trying to justify what Cho did as right, what I am saying is that this individual needed help, was diagnosed with autism and lived without any treatment/therapy for years… not able to have friends, social issues, etc. and then people are surprised this individual like this.

    By denying the diagnosis now, people will further contribute to other’s not getting the help they so desperately need.

    Monica Moshenko, Parent, Advocate

    Host – DisAbility News & Views Radio

    www.disabilitynewsradio.com

    Article “Cho Was Autistic: Family”

    http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/cho-was-autistic-family/2007/04/21/1176697133222.html

    — Monica Mosshenko    Apr 22, 12:23 AM    #

44. (sigh)

    Kelly, your attitude and your defensiveness, combined with your position, are sad, and they’re not good news for the people connected to your patients. I wish the attitude was unusual. I don’t really understand what drives it. Maybe it comes from what you guys must deal with, and perhaps what pulls people towards careers in MHcare. I don’t know.

    Yes, we are talking about Cho; I’m pointing out the parallels between the English dept’s experience and mine in going to MHcare professionals and attempting to get help for sick people we must deal with, and what happened when no help materialized. The experience seems to me not at all unusual. It seems to me you’re blaming them — not me, but them — inappropriately. If you will look farther up the thread, you’ll hear several other people trying to tell you the same thing, if possibly for different reasons.

    Yes, I certainly do have an agenda. I want to see a MHcare system — well, it’d be nice to see a system in the first place — but a system in which people dealing with and concerned about the seriously mentally ill can approach clinicians on their behalf, and point out the holes in MH support for the ill people, without drawing fire ourselves. And without being blamed for attempting to fill in those holes ourselves, when help is not forthcoming. It is, as you must know, a serious and well-documented problem for the families of the mentally ill, damaging trust and leaving people less likely to approach the MHcare system for needed help. With any luck the psych staff at VT did not respond as you did to the English faculty.

    The curious thing is that I am not aware of this kind of attitude coming out of physical medicine. I have never seen doctors blame non-professionals with sick family, friends, or co-workers who tried to pick up the slack in the system after the system failed. The blame is reserved for the medical professionals who failed both the patient and the patient’s community.

    I am sure there exist many humane and reasonable MHcare practicioners. Good luck to you in opening your ears far enough to learn from them.

    — huha    Apr 22, 11:53 AM    #

45. Kate, Cho is certainly responsible for the murders he committed. My condemnation of the English Dept. is neither a pardoning of Cho nor an assignation of blame entirely to that department. If we assume that the English Department members who comprised the “task force” were not hampered by mental conditions that distorted their view of realities, then I would say that the English Dept. bears more responsibility than Cho.

    My position is perhaps too subtle for the readers of this forum: I have maintained that Cho’s mental condition was a problem not just for his family, the school, its administration, mental health professionals, the police, and so on, but for Cho himself. I gather that few in this forum will allow themselves to fully embrace that idea—for to do so somehow means that one has a certain degree of empathy with a killer. As someone who has led the investigations that put three serial killers behind bars, I can tell you that empathy, and indeed sympathy, with the perpetrator is crucial to understanding why multiple homicides are committed. That the public takes this to be “psycho-jargon” is unfortunate; covering your ears won’t make the next Cho go away. The irony is that people like Kate blame Cho for a lack of empathy, yet extend none to him, which seems, we are hearing, characteristic of his entire life. The meaningless slogan “we all make choices about our actions” is more self-comfort than truth, especially when are describing someone with complex mental illness.

    — kelly    Apr 22, 12:13 PM    #

46. To the portentiously self-named “Huha”: perhaps you didn’t see the post by VT Prof above? Your benighted drive to obliterate any differences between your situation and that of the English Department, and then offer a defense of your own dubious actions is not going to bring you closer to the truth in the Cho case, which I again remind you is our subject. Your personal grievances are better addressed to the agencies with which you chose to deal. Do let us know how that turns out for you.

    — kelly    Apr 22, 01:29 PM    #

47. I’ll also add a bit of perspective for the readers of this forum concerning the personal crusade of someone like “huha.”

    I know far better than “huha” what is wrong with the health care system in this country. I’ve served on committees at the local, state, and national levels that were charged with the task of evaluating how it can be improved. To say that the problem is complex is an understatement.

    But to level blame at the MH system for not paying attention to an overinvolved second-party, an ill-equiped lay advocate such as “huha,” misses the mark. The mental health care system failed Cho early and consistently. It did not fail Cho because it did not take into account the lay opinions of literary scholars.

    My point as been—and it has been supported by VT Prof—that the English Dept. had the hubris to imagine it could manage Cho by the creation of a “task force.” The evidence I am now getting supports the conclusion that this task force was not designed with advocacy for Cho in mind; it was an effort to single him out, among other things, for specialized instruction, contributing further to his feelings of isolation.

    The only parallel here between “huha’s” situation and that of the English Department worth discussing is that, in both cases, the second-party ultimately made it more difficult for the patient to receive necessary and adequate care.

    — kelly    Apr 22, 02:25 PM    #

48. Kelly, what should the English Dept have done?

    They could not remove a disruptive or disturbing Cho from their classes. That option was out.

    They were unable to get mental healthcare providers or police to intervene. That option was out.

    They could not provide professional mental healthcare because they did not know how. That option was out.

    There was the option of doing nothing at all and waiting for Cho to attract the notice of MHcare on his own. That would have left the classes held hostage to Cho’s bizarre and alarming behavior, and cheated other students. If you read the remarks of other professors who have had disruptive and potentially dangerous students in their classes, you will also find that giving students the impression that the professor is doing nothing to fix the situation leaves the prof open to poor student evaluations, which count in the tenure process. So sitting on your hands has a career cost, too.

    So: What would you have counseled them to do?

    — huha    Apr 22, 03:36 PM    #

49. On rereading:

    “The mental health care system failed Cho early and consistently. It did not fail Cho because it did not take into account the lay opinions of literary scholars.”

    Now I understand that lay opinions should not in general drive psychiatric practice. But in this case the lay opinion was on the money. And the laypeople were doing all they could to point to the problem and say “Look, look, a problem that needs your attention.”

    It seems to me that you’re saying the MH system should pay attention only to people who come in the door in specific ways. Through self-referral or the judicial process, maybe. But if lay opinion is sometimes as correct as the faculty and student opinions of Cho’s stability were, and the MH system has no way of recognizing laypeople trying to flag real problems, then it seems to me that the MH system failed Cho (and his victims) at least in part because it had no mechanism for evaluating and taking into account the lay opinions of literary scholars.

    I note the word “overinvolved” again, though, Kelly. And again, I sense that in your concern for the mentally ill, you miss the effects of mental illness on people who must deal with the mentally ill in their families or classrooms, and cannot go home at night or claim special authority. This, too, is a well-documented problem in the MH system, and one that’s begun to get attention with some slow movements toward recognizing that families exist (we are not yet to the point, I think, of recognizing that professors, classmates, coworkers and managers exist). The problem is not that we are overinvolved; it is that we are involved. Usually because we have no choice. We cannot simply pretend that our mentally ill students, or our children’s mentally ill parents, do not exist. They do, they have rights, and they have the ability to wreak havoc in other people’s lives. Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear earlier. Attempting to help the sick person is one part of the effort at seeking care, but only part. The other part is self-protection and protection of others for whom we’re responsible. To expect able people in that situation to sit on their hands and do nothing while the damage goes on is, I think, unrealistic — unless the MH providers are actually in a position to say, “Just sit on your hands, let it go on to some tolerable degree, and we’re gonna catch him. Then we’ll take care of it.” But the MH system will have to earn this kind of trust, just as the rest of the medical system has.

    — huha    Apr 22, 04:09 PM    #

50. A fascinating discussion is developing here! I’m very impressed by kelly’s commentary, which raises an important question. Did the eng dept bite off more than they could chew? It sure looks like they did. Can you say lawsuit city?

    I have to say that I get a kick out of folks like huha who spill their guts here and expect to be convincing others. Her situation is the center of the universe apparently. How sad for her. I hope she’s getting the help she needs.

    — Erik    Apr 22, 04:48 PM    #

51. huha, you talk with such certainty about the English Dept’s “correct” diagnosis of Cho when there is absolutely no evidence of that. A poet, for example, who is alarmed by his violent imagery is hardly a reliable diagnostician of a person’s mental condition. Nor is another instructor who found him “scary.” The evidence is mounting that his autistic disorder, combined with a history of trauma underlying depression and sadomasochism, constituted the core of his personality. Cho reached a point where it became unmanageable, and he took drastic and tragic action.

    You also talk with such certainty about what options were off the table. You are wrong in every example you produce. 1) They did in fact remove Cho from regular class instruction, 2) Approaches were made to upper administration, not the police or mental health directly. The latter options are never closed. A literature professor’s faith in the “chain of command,” as she put it, is hardly a viable excuse, 3) They did precisely what was most counterproductive—they isolated him. Furthermore, and this is the point of which you seem to wish to remain ignorant, the Dept created a “task force” that sent a signal to others—the administration, as well as mental health and the legal apparatus—that this “problem student” was receiving adequate management. He wasn’t. A grave mistake was made. Was it the arrogance of literary humanists, concerned (as you point out) with class evaluations and tenure? (We thank you for your insight into the possible self-serving motivations of the department under discussion.)

    I hope it does not turn out that 33 lives were sacrificed for someone’s tenure.

    — kelly    Apr 22, 06:28 PM    #

52. Being familiar with kelly’s publications, I can assure huha that he is aware of and concerned about caregiver stress.

    I just wanted to offer my 2 cents. It seems to me that the English Department did an awfully poor job of describing Cho to the mental health practitioners they supposedly contacted. I haven’t seen the evidence, btw, that the department contacted MH directly, but if they did, they’re open to more just criticism. Any licensed mental health professional is legally (not to mention ethically) bound to followup on a client about whom a report of suicidality or homicidality has been made. I agree with kelly that describing a student, a foreign student no less, as “scary” or “disturbing” is less than helpful.

    — A Psychologist    Apr 22, 07:51 PM    #

53. Kelly, once again you’ve tried to put words into my post that aren’t there. I did not say that the English faculty correctly diagnosed Cho. I said that their opinion re: his stability (in other words, that he was not stable) was correct. Even one of the students even called Cho the kind of guy who walks into a classroom and starts shooting. So yes, the MH system needs some mechanism whereby accurate lay tips can actually be collected and use. Of course, at this point that’s a little like saying a car with a cracked block needs better A/C, but there it is.

    The faculty removed Cho only in order to give him the individual instruction you deplored. They were not able to simply boot him from the class. And the faculty did approach mental health directly. I believe it was Rude who contacted the university counseling service. Students contacted police after stalking incidents, but this did not result in Cho’s removal from his English classes.

    And it looks to me like you wanted faculty to buck the departmental chain of command, but not the MH chain of command. I don’t see how that one works, Kelly.

    So, as I read you, no realistic suggestions, then. Just blame.

    I cannot see how it is you fail to miss the main point here. The “task force” was not created in order to tell mental health and police that they had the situation under control. It was created only after admin, MH and police left them with the problem and demonstrated that they would or could not help. To read this as a sort of turf ‘we got it, no problem, leave us alone’ message seems to me perverse, though in keeping with the rest of your readings so far.

    And thank you for your easy dismissal of what humanities faculty go through to get jobs. A mountain of debt, 7-9 years for a PhD, and a market where hundreds apply for every tenure-track opening. Do you seriously expect faculty to lay their careers on the line every time they get a mentally ill student whom MH services and admin ignores? If so, I think your expectations are unreasonable, not to mention unrealistic. Again, listen to what faculty say.

    Given your responses, Kelly, I have serious trouble believing you’re really a dean of anything. I’ve thought you might be a troll for a while, now, but this kind of response to faculty’s position in the situation just doesn’t seem to fit.

    — huha    Apr 22, 07:58 PM    #

54. This discussion, beginning with Doreen’s positive assertion that nothing like this could ever happen on her campus, and continuing the debate between Kelly, a deliverer of MH care, and huhu, a professor and caregiver, only demonstrates to me that the system is broken completely.
    Having attempted to get help for a now-deceased student of mine, I can tell you that, from firsthand knowledge, the system sucks. Yes, that’s the “intellectual” term for it. Because when I called for help, I was put off. No time, not their job, whatever. When I finally was advised (by another MH person) to act as his “advocate” (his parents were no where to be seen), he finally was institutionalized… for 10 days! Only to be let out. No follow-up. He came to class. Then, within two months, he shot his brains out. No, he didn’t shoot up the campus. Thank God. But he didn’t get the help he needed either. The doctors gave him a prescription and said call us next week.

    There needs to be a system of guardianship set up to ensure that adults who need help will get it. But the way it is now, if someone who is extremely mentally ill needs help, they can still refuse it. And it puts themselves and others in jeopardy.

    To those who blame the VT English department – shame on you. They had the insight to see there was a problem. And when they couldn’t get someone in the right arena to recognize it, they didn’t have the luxury of just ignoring the problem.

    To Doreen and Kelly, get out more. The real world – and the way it deals with real people – is a bad place. And your attitude indicates an arrogance towards the human condition that does the MH services and our colleges and communities a great disservice.

    — emma    Apr 22, 08:56 PM    #

55. Clearly, huha is in a state of denial about her own words, her judgment clouded by a personalized agenda which she is straining to turn into a moral argument.

    It is true that I’ve never had the experience of governing humanists, but from the vivid description huha provides of their self-interested motivations, I count myself fortunate.

    — kelly    Apr 22, 09:07 PM    #

56. I honestly can’t say who is more out of touch with reality, huha or kelly.

    Huha is grinding a personal axe, after airing her dirty laundry. Her implication that a faculty member in the humanities wouldn’t dare sacrifice their tiny appointment to help save a life (in this case, 33!) is appalling. Seven to nine years to write a dissertation? Oh my; I almost fell out of my chair. I don’t doubt the figure, but does the world really need, e.g., another interpretation of an obscure nineteenth-century author? I don’t think so. In 8 years, I conducted research abroad, wrote my dissertation, published two monographs, and got tenure.

    Then there’s kelly who seems bent on condemning the humanists for even daring to think they could help Cho. I applaud the department’s efforts, even though hindsight tells us they may have made a serious blunder. What kelly doesn’t say is I wonder how the chair of that department can sleep at night, knowing they did little but try to pass the buck to some “officials” as the news article says. kelly’s got some fixing of the system to do. Go to it!

    — Theodore S.    Apr 22, 10:18 PM    #

57. I find myself puzzled by the tone of many of the posts here but especially by those from Kelly. What happened at VT was a tragedy, and the repercussions of that event are likely to haunt all those affected, no matter how peripherally, for decades to come. All the reports so far indicate that many people on the VT campus were aware that Cho was a deeply troubled young man and tried in various ways to help him, only to find that bureaucratic barriers, privacy concerns, and even his own mental illness prevented them. According to the NY Times the VT English Dept set up something described as a “task force” to try to figure out some way of helping Cho or, perhaps, preventing his harming others. Many of those posting to this forum speak as if that “task force” were some kind of semi-official body that thought of itself as solving Cho’s problems by its very existence. Based on the report in the Times, it is ridiculous to characterize the “task force” in this way. The description indicates that the“task force” (and I use quotes deliberately) was an ad hoc group of concerned people attempting to figure what steps they could take to alert the appropriate professionals. Kelly’s diatribes seem largely aimed at what he/she apparently imagines to have been a group of interfering amateurs in the VT
    English Dept who got in the way of the MH professionals who should have been helping Cho. This is an extraordinary interpretation of what appears to have happened, and argues a surprising level of defensiveness on Kelly’s part. The level of anger expressed in so many of the posts to this forum, much of it aimed at the VT English Dept, whose members seem to have tried more than anyone else to have tried to get help for Cho in the course of his career and to have been rebuffed by the various professionals who should have taken over that responsibility, is unseemly. Can’t we find something constructive to say about this tragedy? Treating it as an easy opportunity to spew bile about “humanists” and “amateur psychiatrists” is indecent, especially when one considers that it was the “humanists” and “amateur psychiatrists” at VT, not the professionals, who seem to have shown most concern about Cho over the past 4 years.

    — Ann    Apr 22, 11:00 PM    #

58. Psychologist, thank you for your more reasonable tone.

    What you’re saying sounds a little funny, though. Now the English faculty are supposed to know which keywords psych staff are listening for? How are they supposed to know these things? (And, if they do know and use them, what are the odds that clinicians like Kelly — assuming he really is one, and God help his clients if he is — are going to decide that these folks are trying to game the system?)

    We don’t expect caregivers or friends of people with physical ailments to do a “good job” of describing them to doctors, or blame them if they fail to use the words docs are listening for. When that happens, the medical people understand that they’ve failed to get across to people what it is they need to hear, and have failed to hear & follow up on signals sent by laypeople. I see no reason why this shouldn’t be the standard in MH as well, unless you guys have the resources for massive public education campaigns. And it doesn’t look to me like you do, given the unmet need for basic service provision in so many areas of the country. Again, I think maybe this is an area where you guys need to look to your own practices.

    — huha    Apr 22, 11:11 PM    #

59. Theodore, I did not say English faculty would not risk tenure to save 33 lives. I said, and please read carefully, that they should not be expected to risk their careers every time an unstable or seemingly ill person shows up in their classrooms. It happens more frequently than you might imagine, and trying to figure out how to deal with these students is a chronic subject of conversation. The odds are vastly against any of these students shooting up the classrooms, so expecting professors to behave as if they will is not quite reasonable.

    I’m sorry you don’t like the career realities in the humanities. Neither do humanists, for the most part. I am hard pressed to say that need has much to do with it.

    — huha    Apr 22, 11:38 PM    #

60. More heat than light in most of these petty exercises in axe grinding.

    My own sense is that the system worked as it should and those who cared tried to do what they could to deal with a troubled kid. But the killer didn’t cross the lines that mandated he be put into any kind of involuntary custody. It happens thousands of times a day around the country, and the number of mentally ill persons in the US correctional system testifies to our inability to deal constructively with the mentally ill, in many cases.

    The ‘truth’ is, if I can use such a word, that no one could know the killer would act out in this way. Only after the fact does his behavior become clear. And it’s only after the fact that people, like many on this listing, use events like this to reproduce their ideological predispositions, as I too am doing.

    No matter the precautions an institution might want to put in place, a determined killer will find a way to act out his rage.

    — chiasm    Apr 23, 01:04 AM    #

61. I’m aghast at the level of bile flung at my colleagues in English at VT. Cho was a pure lunatic, and the English department recognized that, and spoke out and acted. . . If only the administration was listening. My own theory is that Cho was allowed to stay at VT probably because he could pay tuition out of pocket. (I don’t know if this is a fact, but everything said in the media suggests as much.) If so, the fact that Cho was in the position to do what he did (on the eve of his graduation) rests on a whole set of reasons that we have done nothing to approach in this forum. Namely, the privileges offered to students who pay. . .Too often, the observations of humanists are treated with the derision seen in this forum even by administrations as they kowtow to bucks at the expense of learning.

    The big question is why wasn’t the administration listening to its own faculty about this boy?

    — prof    Apr 23, 01:44 AM    #

62. As I read these posts I am struck by Kelly’s eagerness to vilify the VT English Department for failing to prevent this tragedy while at the same time he is all too willing to let members of his own profession off the hook. Has he forgotten that Cho was involuntarily committed for evaluation in 2005 as a result of the concerns raised by the “humanists” he mocks, but that the psychiatrist that evaluated it him found that he was not a threat to others? It was largely because of that diagnosis that he was able to return to VT. Given that experience, it is hardly surprising that the VT faculty may have felt they were on their own as they attempted to figure out what options they had in dealing with this young man. Perhaps it is because of this failure by members of his own profession that Kelly is so defensive in his discussion of the mental health issues raised by this case, and so concerned to blame those that he considers to be unqualified.

    — ann    Apr 23, 08:45 AM    #

63. prof writes:

    “Too often, the observations of humanists are treated with the derision seen in this forum even by administrations as they kowtow to bucks at the expense of learning.”

    It is easy to blame “bucks” when the fact is that humanists bring nothing to the university. They are parasites—no grant money worth mentioning, no alumnae who will give back to the uni, virtually no community outreach. But they do produce heaps of “scholarship” that only folks in their narrow disciplinary niche read (e.g., socially irrelevant fields like post-colonial studies). Humanists are academic bottom-feeders—the administration knows this, and if a third-tier English Department such as VT really mattered, the spotlight would be on it much more intensely.

    There is where a blow-hard like kelly made a mistake: why bother critiquing a discipline that is irrelevant?

    — Hans    Apr 23, 04:09 PM    #

64. chiasm, you’ll have to explain this to me when you wrote “The ‘truth’ is, if I can use such a word, that no one could know the killer would act out in this way.” I couldn’t disagree more. While the thought may be comforting to some, for example, those who tried to help and failed like the English department in question, the reality is that one interview with a kid like Cho would provide all the evidence needed to have him undergo court-ordered treatment. I’m talking residential (not out-patient) treatment.

    I don’t know who dropped the ball in this case. It looks to me that the legal system failed along with the psych evaluator. But the fact that “mistakes were made” in this case does not in any way justify a statement like chiasm’s that “no one could know” that this kid was an imminent threat.

    So, please stop making statements that, while they offer some comfort, are not true.

    — Another psychologist    Apr 23, 04:21 PM    #

65. This is from the VT Department of English website.

    A professor’s work is described thus:

    “Recently I studied a collection of letters written by mountain families in the 1930s. These letters were written in response to families’ imminent displacement from their homes in order to form Shenandoah National Park. I examined the ways the letters are a “situated literacy event,” the ways that “displacement rhetorics” tend to exclude the very people being displaced, and the ways that the letter writers resisted their displacement through self-representation.”

    This could, I suppose, have had social and political relevance, but then it turned into pablum about “displacement rhetorics.” This kind of work is representative of humanist scholarship—it has no impact on the real world; it changes no one’s life; it alters no policies. It is inert.

    My point is simply that when humanists are “aghast” when someone critiques their ineffectualness, they might take a good look at their field . They should be “aghast” at what they see.

    — Hans    Apr 23, 04:47 PM    #

66. Prof (post #61) describes Cho as “a pure lunatic.” I regret that I need to comment on how benighted such a statement is.

    This will be hard for humanists to grasp since their critical acumen is focused on textual rather than living subjects, but, heck, even humanists are educable, in theory anyway.

    One of my mentors was Aaron Beck, and one of his principles was that once you make an honest attempt to understand “irrational” or “lunatic” behavior or language, it does not end up looking so at all, in fact, it turns out to be quite rational, cognitively based.

    Now the importance of this is that when Prof makes an ignorant statement, it signals that no, or at best a very clumsy, attempt was made to understand this young man from his point of view. He was labeled, marginalized, and apparently, if Prof’s comments are any guide, seen as a “thing” to be dealt with rather than as a human being.

    Humanists are often the least humane, not out of malice, but out of ignorance.

    What effect did such marginalization have upon Cho, we can only speculate since we obviously can’t speak with him. But I can tell you that 35-plus years in the field of forensic psychology and medicine indicates to me that it had a negative impact, and one to which Cho himself was likely quite sensitive. The emergent literature in areas such as affect regulation, attachment, mentalization, and dialectical behavior approaches suggests that the kinds of negative messages that were transmitted to Cho, at a level below awareness, by members of the department who offered him a self-image as lunatic, could only have damaged him further.

    “Another psychologist” makes a good point above: it is indeed so easy to put a label on someone like Cho, and then somehow take comfort in the fact that he was unreachable, unchangeable. There is, however, no clinical evidence to support such a belief regarding any human being in general, let alone Cho in particular.

    It furthermore offers us comfort, as Another Psychologist implies, to believe that this tragedy was unavoidable. It exonerates those who, according to the Times anyway, “appear to have worked harder than anyone to intervene in his life.”

    One of the major disappointments in the wake of this tragedy is that their own involvement in it won’t be used by the humanists as an opportunity for self-analysis and self-improvement. Instead, foolishness of the kind huha spews will be de rigueur.

    — kelly    Apr 23, 07:16 PM    #

67. Hans,
    I don’t believe that the humanities are irrelevant. I would, however, submit that surprisingly often they make themselves irrelevant. There is no check against self-delusion. My colleagues and I often joke, for example, about the rubbish that is produced under the rubric of “psychoanalytic criticism” in the humanities. The choice of Lacan and Zizek as their central sources makes perfect sense—two marginally intelligent wordsmithes whose theory has little application to what takes place in the consulting room (in the case of Lacan) or the social world (in the case of Zizek).

    — kelly    Apr 23, 09:00 PM    #

68. So now Kelly has found another reason why the tragedy at VT was primarily the fault of the “humanists” in the English Department—it happened because of “the kinds of negative messages that were transmitted to Cho, at a level below awareness, by members of the department.” Cho, Kelly explains to us, “was labeled, marginalized, and … seen as a “thing” to be dealt with rather than as a human being.” Kelly makes this judgment based on a single incautious comment by a self-identified VT professor and infers from it a whole range of behaviors toward Cho on the part of the entire English Dept faculty of VT. Throughout this thread Kelly has labeled all the VT English Dept faculty members as arrogant, over-reaching, inclined to view other people as textual objects rather than individual human beings. He has mocked the perspective of all posters to this forum except for himself and those few with whom he occasionally agrees. Given Kelly’s apparent recognition of the pitfalls of an excessive reliance on labeling, one wonders why he is so ready to engage in the practice himself. Or is it perhaps that he disapproves of such behavior only when he can attribute it to a group he despises?

    — Ann    Apr 23, 09:26 PM    #

69. Ann, do reread the last two sentences of my 7:16 post ; ).

    For those of you who enjoy sound bites, I’ve been invited to critique the English department’s actions on MSNBC later this week. Apparently I’ll be joined by a prosecutor who shares some of my opinions and will be examining the department’s actions given the real potential for litigation.

    — kelly    Apr 23, 10:21 PM    #

70. This is a fascinating discussion. One important question to kelly remains unanswered: what do you think the English Department should have done?

    — Jean    Apr 25, 05:46 PM    #

71. I want to thank kelly for hitting a home run. The English Department should hang its head. I trust the chairperson will resign.

    — VT science prof    Apr 26, 11:44 AM    #

72. The English department repeatedly asked the administration to remove Cho from his English classes. ( For one thing, he was using his cell phone to photograph female studentss under their desks and the female students reported being afraid of him.) The English dept. told the administration that the instructors and many of the students were afraid of Cho. The administration did nothing.

    Cho was involuntarily committed to a mental health facility for two days. The mental health facility released him, saying he was not a danger to others.

    Somehow, Kelly and science prof think the main blame in this whole thing rests on the English department??

    — Xavier    Apr 26, 08:13 PM    #

73. Right on, Xavier (post 72). Of course Kelly and science prof think the main blame should fall on the English department—otherwise they would have to consider the possibility that the so-called experts (in other words, people like Kelly) might have been at fault here.

    — ann    Apr 26, 11:18 PM    #

74. Xavier, they’re not saying “the main blame”. They’re saying some blame. And in their eyes what the eng dept did was this overweening act of hubris, so they’re dramatic about it. You have to understand here that the psych people are interested in treating the mentally ill. They’re not especially interested in the people the mentally ill live and work with. If it takes five rounds of catch and release to find the right residential facility and start getting to whatever psych work there is to do, then that’s what it takes, and if that causes problems for others, well, that’s not the psych community’s problem. The presumption is that people on the outside should simply take care of themselves in the meantime and refrain from meddling. However, while taking care of themselves, the rest of the world should also refrain from damaging their clients and making things worse.

    Of course this doesn’t work, because a) people outside the profession – and frequently inside the profession – don’t know what’s going to make things worse; and b) mentally ill people have rights too. You can’t just turn a Cho out to wander the roads like an English pauper until the psych people notice and collect him (again), and rightly so. Unfortunately, letting him hang around just because psych people have released him also doesn’t work in an English department. I think this is where the psych people shrug and leave the conversation, or find refuge in inadequate concepts like “caregiver stress”, or insist that options that don’t exist actually do. But it seems to me that as far they’re concerned, the way people cope with a Cho is really not their problem, except when the solutions impinge on their clients and their ability to treat.

    Kelly, if you want to be helpful in this, you might perhaps put out guidelines for what institutions, families, etc. should do when a seriously mentally ill person is causing havoc and for some reason professional help is either unavailable or isn’t doing much within some reasonable timeframe – reasonable, that is, for the client’s community or workplace or family. If it’s to be helpful it should address realities the community faces, whether or not you approve of them (for instance, the job market in the humanities, and the customer-service orientation in departments, as explanations for why professors can’t be expected to wait out a student like Cho). And you’d need to drop the kind of defensiveness and attacks you’ve put out here when people came back to you and told you why your proposals don’t work in reality. I think this would be a very tough project, because I think in the end a lot of the solutions that are tolerable for the communities really do come at the expense of the mentally ill. But if you have better, realistic ideas, everyone is waiting.

    And yes, I presume that your aim, or one of your aims, is to protect not just a Cho but the community in general from illnesses like Cho’s. Which is wonderful, but the community has to be able to stand your cure, or they’ll never take it.

    Your tone in general could use a lot of work, too. Misreading and word-twisting in order to attack; name-calling; making accusations – none of this is helpful.

    — huha    Apr 26, 11:59 PM    #

75. Other people’s rights were being violated here as well. The women in Cho’s classes had a right to attend class without being surreptiously photographed under their desks. That is sexual harrassment and any workplace that allowed that to go on would be liable.

    The mental health profession often seems to operate in a vaccuum of its own making when it pays no attention to information from those who are affected by the mentally ill. Cho already was endangering others (stalking women) when he was released from the facility and pronounced not a threat to others.

    — Xavier    Apr 27, 10:23 AM    #

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