An open question to faculty readers

According to the Washington Post, there were some warning signs from Cho Seung Hui before he killed more than 30 people at Virginia Tech: “Cho was an English major whose creative writing was so disturbing that he was referred to the school’s counseling service, the Associated Press reported.” This fact prompted an e-mail from a ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

According to the Washington Post, there were some warning signs from Cho Seung Hui before he killed more than 30 people at Virginia Tech: "Cho was an English major whose creative writing was so disturbing that he was referred to the school's counseling service, the Associated Press reported." This fact prompted an e-mail from a colleague that raises a disturbing question: In 8 years, I've taught hundreds of students. 2 of them so alarmed me by their behavior, I contacted the Dean of Students office to see what could be done. The answer: nothing. The best I got was a half-baked assurance that voluntary counseling would be suggested to one of them (he was an undergraduate who had insisted on taking my graduate seminar, showed up and refused to leave on the first day of class, and then sent me increasingly enraged emails filled with expletives and threats to bring charges against me to the Dean of Students). I ended up having to have a staff member escort me to class in case the student showed up again. He didn't, fortunately. But I didn't follow up and I bet nobody else did, either. When a faculty or staff member reports disturbing student activity, what is the appropriate response? Can any actions be mandatory? What feedback loops should be regularly instituted? I don't have any answers, but I do have an acute sense of vulnerability -- universities, esp. public ones, are wide open. All professors have encountered or will encounter this problem in their careers -- the student who seems way too intense for their own good. That said, I'm also concerned about overreaction. What happened at Blacksburg is a rare event, and red-flagging students just for being intense and weird can create problems as well. [UPDATE: Megan McArdle elaborates on this point.] Time's Julie Rawe has one story on how different universities are coping with this problem. A few questions to faculty readers out there, however: 1) Have you ever encountered a student you suspected of being capable of violence on this scale? 2) What action did you take? 3) What, if anything, could or should universities do to improve security?

According to the Washington Post, there were some warning signs from Cho Seung Hui before he killed more than 30 people at Virginia Tech: “Cho was an English major whose creative writing was so disturbing that he was referred to the school’s counseling service, the Associated Press reported.” This fact prompted an e-mail from a colleague that raises a disturbing question:

In 8 years, I’ve taught hundreds of students. 2 of them so alarmed me by their behavior, I contacted the Dean of Students office to see what could be done. The answer: nothing. The best I got was a half-baked assurance that voluntary counseling would be suggested to one of them (he was an undergraduate who had insisted on taking my graduate seminar, showed up and refused to leave on the first day of class, and then sent me increasingly enraged emails filled with expletives and threats to bring charges against me to the Dean of Students). I ended up having to have a staff member escort me to class in case the student showed up again. He didn’t, fortunately. But I didn’t follow up and I bet nobody else did, either. When a faculty or staff member reports disturbing student activity, what is the appropriate response? Can any actions be mandatory? What feedback loops should be regularly instituted? I don’t have any answers, but I do have an acute sense of vulnerability — universities, esp. public ones, are wide open.

All professors have encountered or will encounter this problem in their careers — the student who seems way too intense for their own good. That said, I’m also concerned about overreaction. What happened at Blacksburg is a rare event, and red-flagging students just for being intense and weird can create problems as well. [UPDATE: Megan McArdle elaborates on this point.] Time‘s Julie Rawe has one story on how different universities are coping with this problem. A few questions to faculty readers out there, however:

1) Have you ever encountered a student you suspected of being capable of violence on this scale? 2) What action did you take? 3) What, if anything, could or should universities do to improve security?

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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