Warnings from VT Professor Ignored

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In other words, its societally unacceptable to get into a mutually engaged fist fight to settle an argument and let off steam.

This is utter crap.

I weighed 140 lbs when I graduated high school, and only sitting at a desk for 6 1/2 years has gotten me to my "scientifically determined ideal weight".

I was the victim of plenty of your "mutually engaged fist fights" in my youth. I did not fight, because I was taught that fighting is wrong. It's that simple.

As an adult, I have come to the more correct conclusion: There are times, very few and far between, when you need to fight. And when you do, you have to kill your opponent.

Random fistfights? Well, I can't really comment about them without bringing the size or functionality of the participant's manhood into question.
 
When we talked to him about getting help, he said nothing.-- but then went home the next weekend and stole a firearm from his step-father. He came back to school and told a "friend" that he was going to "take care" of the officers of the fraternity (one being me.)

Obviously, we were told. He was expelled from the fraternity. His family had him committed for his problems and I didn't see him again for over two years.

This would seem to have been key in prevention.
 
No, surely I'm not. In fact, years back when I was an undergrad I took a
number of creative writing classes as extra electives. One was also with a
well-known vietnam vet poet. In all of the classes it was common practice
for us to make copies of our work for all our classmates and critique each
other's work, both verbally during class and in notes on the back (which could
be anonymous). We had our share of sex, violence, and the dark side.

I can never recall a student inspiring fear/dread/loathing in his/her classmates.
I can never recall a student that one of the instructors looked upon in such
a way and then pulled after class. It was always a go around the room based
on seating or alphabetical order kind of calling upon (or by name first if the
instructor was particularly impressed), then "have a good day, see you all
next week." There were plenty of times when students and instructors
expressed opinions on various topics that differed which gave rise to some
emotional debates.

In Cho's case, he inspired fear in his fellow students and instructor(s).

What I'm saying here is that we had someone inspiring fear in the faculty,
stalking girls on campus, having a couple police stop by (though probably
nothing prosecutable at that time), etc. My view at prevention would have
to do with addressing the person showing these kinds of behaviors rather
than the usual "let's ban guns" or "let's give everyone guns." Neither approach
addresses the real problem which is the person who has the problem.

Wouldn't you agree?
 
I don't think it was the content of his writing that inspired fear, but the quality of it. I can't even finish reading McBeef because it's so badly written it's just down right painful. If I had been in his class I probably would've stopped showing up to be spared having to suffer through that, too. :barf:
 
I wonder what fence-sitting lurkers think of some of the rhetoric on this board -- and worse on other gun boards -- about last-stand shootouts with the gub'mint, voting from the rooftops, feeding the hogs, it's time Claire!, and other violent antisocial death fantasies.

Sad.
 
My view at prevention would have to do with addressing the person showing these kinds of behaviors rather than the usual "let's ban guns" or "let's give everyone guns." Neither approach addresses the real problem which is the person who has the problem.

Wouldn't you agree?

I agree with you to the point that this person should have been addressed. This is a difficult thing. Even today mental health as a science is in it's infancy. Doctors perscribe powerful drugs based on predictive analysis rather than a farily certain outcome. One doctor best described it to me as trying to figure out what is wrong with your car by putting your ear to the hood while it is running. I do not think in my life time we will see a scanner of any kind that will look into a man's heart and mind and determine what he is thinking and why.

Two hundred years ago if a man were going around writing what he was writing, doing what he was doing and calling himself "Question Mark" he would have had an answer quite quickly and been slapped in the stocks or had some similar treatment until he had modified his behavior. One hundred years ago he would have been sent to an asylum, probably to never return. Fifty years ago electric shocks, maybe an experimental frontal lobotomy.

Today as progressive and liberal as society is there are still a few ways to address this. So we can not really blame society either. A judge ordered him to go to a doctor. He went. The doctor said he did not need to be locked up. Was the doctor wrong? Maybe he was right on that day, but he was wrong two years later. A lot can happen to a 20 year old in two years.

Where does this leave us? In a difficult spot. We can not say enter his name into a database to prevent him from buying firearms. Why? Because if he is sane enough to be walking around in public interacting with people he should be sane enough to own a gun. If he is a danger to himself and others with a gun then he should be locked up.... The gun itself is immaterial. He could have just as easily drove a SUV around campus running people over until the police shot him. It is a catch-22.

So what would you propose?
 
“There was some concern about him,” said Professor Carolyn Rude, head of the English department.

“Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it’s creative or if they are describing things.”

A play he wrote last year as part of a writing class gave some clue to his thinking. Entitled Richard McBeef, it featured a 13-year-old boy who accuses his stepfather of paedophilia and murdering his father.

The teenager talks of killing the older man and, at one point, the child’s mother brandishes a chainsaw at the stepfather.

The play ends with the man striking the child “a deadly blow.”

I was a Writing major in college.

We had some interesting stories in our workshops, though not this one in particular.

What I ask, though, is should we have thrown Jonathan Swift, Franz Kafka, Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen King, and Alfred Hitchcock into mental institutions for what they wrote in school?

The notion is frightening.
 
What I ask, though, is should we have thrown Jonathan Swift, Franz Kafka, Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen King, and Alfred Hitchcock into mental institutions for what they wrote in school?

Okay first off to compare this guy's rantings to any of the above people is not a good comparison. They were all actually good and or/are great even though I find Kafka a little wordy myself. While all writers are self indulgent most are not so egocentric that they do not even understand the world.

Second and this is quite ironic, several of the people on the list above were/ are in trouble with the law and/or/ were/are in mental/legal institutions on a regular basis. Some due to substance abuse problems and/or criminal behavior.

Third- no one is proposing anyone be thrown into a mental institution for what they write. This guy was deeply disturbed on many levels. It should have been caught, not just through bad writing but for many other reasons.
 
To me, the obvious question is: If he was so obviously deranged that they couldn't even let him come to class, how is it that he didn't flunk out? What kind of self-esteem academy are they running there?

They were actually about to let this punk graduate with an English degree just because his tuition checks didn't bounce for four years? Granted, he probably could have gotten into grad school at Yale or Harvard, but then?
 
So what would you propose?

I noticed over lunch as I flipped between CNN and Fox that both were discussing
warning signs, mental health, and getting the individual treatment. Some of
the concerns were length of time on a waiting list, difficulty forcing treatment
when it's not mandated (ie, required by court), etc.

One of the people was a college student's father who took it upon himself to
get his son treatment. It sounded like things were very bad and this kid was
literally wearing a tinfoil hat.

So my proposal: Be your brother's keeper.
 
So my proposal: Be your brother's keeper.

Ouch.

I am not saying I don't hear you. However you will not find a lot of agreement in the pro RKBA community on that. Many people here consider themselves rugged indivivdualists (regardless of the reality of their lives) along the lines of Ayn Rand, who of course was deliberately against this line of reasoning on the social, economic and political fronts. Many will gladly shoot a thief in the back for swiping their car stereo. Never mind ever giving a mentally ill person a second thought, other than to have a plan to do them in as soon as they present a threat.

If we look at the historical context where all members of the community were important in order to ensure survival of the community, those days are long gone. A great many people do not consider everyone to have value to them and therefore that person has NO value to anyone. Easier to shoot them and be done with it than to deal with trying to help a person to prevent a tragedy.
 
Titan6, excellent post. You're right. In fact, many people can use the "I'm
a rugged individualist" mentality as an excuse not to get involved. In practice,
this makes it little different than the typical liberal "no one is individually responsible
or accountable" attitude.
 
It does. My first inclination is that the individual's family needs to be the
first in line to take responsibility when that individual is impaired and can
not. I know this isn't always possible. I certainly do not want a government
agency being the first.

With Cho, I have to wonder who was footing his bills in school. It was said
he had family in the DC area and they have all lived here since 1992(?). I
know no one wants to blame the family (I certainly don't) for an adult's
actions, but I would still have to wonder what kind of help/effort was made.
I say this because I've known plenty of parents who took care of their
"adult" college kids when they began to have problems on campus. Often
you will find that there was some history back in HS. I would imagine Cho
had some quirks and possibly some prior in-patient mental health in JH or HS,
but that still isn't anything that would or should brand someone with the
proverbial scarlet letter as a future problem in the community.

I think we could still find some sort of balance when it comes to an individual
with a problem --we do it everyday.
 
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