Wednesday, April 18, 2007

The constitutional right to be nuts . . .


. . . even if that screws up others' constitutional right to life.

From MSNBC:

Based on emerging accounts of his behavior before his deadly attack at Virginia Tech, Cho [Seung-Hui] exhibited three characteristics that the experts say are common among school shooters:

He didn’t “just snap” but instead acquired the weapons weeks earlier.

He was considered a threat by others, even though he didn’t make any explicit threats.

Fellow students and teachers raised concerns about his behavior.

Cho caused a great deal of concern on the Virginia Tech campus before Monday's mass shooting, even being voluntarily committed to a mental health facility for a day or two in 2005 after he made a second unwanted contact with female students, campus officials said Wednesday. His writings and behavior in class alarmed other students and teachers. His roommates heard him talk of suicide.

But because he didn’t threaten to harm anyone, university officials said, there was little more they could do.

That's been the pattern in most previous school attacks in the U.S., according to a landmark study in 2002 by the U.S. Secret Service. Researchers looked at 37 school shootings and interviewed 10 of the shooters themselves.

In more than three out of four school shootings, the attacker had made no threat against the schoolteachers or students. But most attackers engaged in some behavior prior to the incident that caused others concern or indicated a need for help. The attackers posed a threat even though they hadn't made a threat.

Schools can do a lot more to deal with such concerns, said one of the authors of the study.

"The notion that a concerned teacher who tries to get someone to counseling and that there are no other options if the student refuses to go — that seems much too limited," one of the report’s co-authors, psychologist Robert A. Fein, told MSNBC.com on Wednesday. He has consulted with federal agencies on targeted violence, including terrorism, school shootings and workplace violence.

"I understand that students in college are not high school kids," Fein said, "but schools should be able to do better than that. This is not to cast blame on anyone. There's no cookie-cutter solution, and there probably are lots of 'right ways,' but the notion of having a team that can gather and examine information and determine 'we may have a problem here' and then work to figure out what to do, or ask others, or keep working on it, still makes sense to me."

Virginia Tech officials described a long chain of events preceding Monday's shooting and expressed frustration that their systems weren't set up to deal with a student like Cho, who had not made a threat or committed a crime. Since his erratic behavior did not cross those thresholds, they said they could do nothing more than recommend he receive counseling.

COULD SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN in what rational world can we not immediately institutionalize -- institutionalize until we're reasonably sure they're no danger to themselves or others -- someone who is such a wack job that he has half the university scared spitless? Like this, as recounted in London's Evening Standard:

The Virginia Tech gunman was taken to a mental health facility in 2005, it has been revealed.

Cho Seung-Hui was evaluated by mental health professionals after female students complained to police about him and his parents became afraid he was suicidal.

Virginia Tech police chief Wendell Flincham confirmed moments ago that Cho Seung-Hui had targeted two female students in November and December of 2005.
He made contact with the first woman through phone calls and in person. Though she complained to police, she later declined to press charges, referring to Cho's attentions as "annoying".

The matter was then handled within the university, outside the scope of police.

Cho instant messaged the second woman in December, 2005. She asked police to ensure he had no further contact with her, and police gave Cho a warning regarding the matter.

Later Cho's parents expressed concern to police that he may have been suicidal. They asked him to speak to a counsellor, and a temporary detention order was issued resulting in Cho being sent to a mental health facility independent of the university.

Under a temporary detention order a person can be committed to a mental health facility voluntarily or involuntarily. Mr Flincham said he believed Cho had gone to the facility on December 13, 2005 voluntarily. It is not yet known how long he stayed for, and any further mental health records are subject to privacy laws.

However according to the file seen by police, nothing was recorded that could have prevented Cho from purchasing a gun.

(snip)

Teachers and fellow students at Virginia Tech lived in fear of Cho Seung-Hui in the 18 months before he struck, it was revealed this afternoon.

A lecturer was so frightened by Cho's violent fantasies that she made up a secret codeword so that she could alert security without him knowing.

The alarm she felt on reading plays written by the Virginia Tech gunman was enough for her to contact police and university authorities.

British-born professor Lucinda Roy has revealed that if she had sensed he was about to erupt she was going to mention the name of a dead professor to her assistant - who had been told to call the police.

Students described Cho's descent from campus oddball to chilling loner with a loathing for "rich kids" as he began secretly photographing pupils in class, started going to the gym to "beef up" and had a military-style haircut.

It emerged today that at one stage students were so scared of his behaviour that only seven out of 70 turned up for class, forcing lecturers to give him one-to-one tuition.

One teacher even suggested today he was given A grades because he was so "intimidating and staff wanted to keep him happy".

Nikki Giovanni, who teaches poetry, said she threatened to resign if Cho was not taken out of her class. She said: "I think he liked the idea he was a scary guy. Some people like that. That is how they define themselves. Kids write about murder and suicide all the time. But there was something that made us all pay attention closely.

"Students absolutely would not come into class. They said, 'He is taking photographs of us. We don't know what he is doing. It is very strange'."

British-born professor Lucinda Roy was so concerned about Cho Seung-Hui that she had a secret code word designed to alert security if he became unstable

When she first heard of the killings Professor Giovanni said she immediately thought it would be Cho.

"When they said it was a shooting, I said, 'Okay...' When they said a young Asian, I said, 'For sure'. I knew when it happened that that was who it was.

"There was something mean about this boy. I've taught troubled youngsters, I've taught crazy people. It was the meanness that bothered me. It was a real mean streak."
AFTER CHO STALKED a couple of women and his parents told authorities they feared he was suicidal he was "committed" . . . if being ordered to get outpatient treatment can be called such a thing. Riiiiight. And only after a professor had tried and failed to convince him to seek help -- and was told he couldn't be made to go.

Some students, some parents and some opinion mavens are all up in arms about the two hours between Cho's first murderous outburst and the university warning the student body. Why, they want to know, wasn't the campus shut down? Why, they want to know, didn't campus police and university officials go into full freakout mode at the first 911 call from the Ambler-Johnston dormitory?

Well, for one thing, they were -- from the appearance of things -- working off the entirely reasonable hypothesis that it was an isolated incident, maybe some kind of grudge thing, and that the killer was long gone. That is a reasonable thing for cops to think.

Even nowadays, thinking that what actually happened Monday was even a remotely likely outcome would have been a massive stretch of logic and imagination. University officials acted fairly reasonably, and they got bit in the ass by it . . . to horrific effect.

AND NOW YOU HAVE NUTJOB CONSERVATIVES railing on their AM-radio echo chambers that the horror that occurred could have been stopped if only, if only, half the student body of Virginia Tech had been packing heat. If only scores of Hokies had handguns and concealed-carry permits -- if only the administration of that university had welcomed turning the campus into a literal armed camp -- Cho Seung-Hui would have been turned into Swiss cheese after, oh, the first murder or five.

For the love of God, is it really necessary to have to make a detailed, footnoted case that no, we don't want college kids packing .44s and .22s and 9 millimeters and .357 magnums on campus? Have right-wing, NRA-loving radio blatherers so departed from reality -- so departed from any notion of what a civilized society looks like -- that they seriously think it would be a good thing to turn places like Virginia Tech into the Wild, Wild West?

Is this really the college experience that moms and dads want for their offspring? Do we only get to choose between society-as-armed-camp and Atrocity of the Day?

If this truly is what we've come to as a society, it's over, y'all. I'm outta here.

Point me toward Patmos. Or Lost Cove, Tennessee.

OR, MAYBE WE COULD TRY another tack. Perhaps we could resolve that if a loner student at Fill in the Blank U. looks like a nut, acts like a nut, writes really disturbing things like a nut and scares the bejeezus out of his classmates and professors -- like a nut -- we just go on the assumption that HE'S A NUT and immediately get him intensive treatment.

Before he cracks like a nut, and people die.

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