Nice article. I saw the underlying theme not the literary works but administrations inability to deal with cases which were clearly beyond just writing.

Words don't kill people, people kill people.

By reading his plays, the only thing that pops into my head is:

Oooh, he killed all these people because his writing was AWFUL! That must have made him feel very bad about himself.

Ok ok, I know, BAD ME!

It's been a busy week, and I've not been able to post much until tonight. This topic has been on my mind since it happened. I know many of the writing faculty at VaTech, and I've been on that campus more times than I can count. I also teach creative writing and literature at two different universities, so the topic of his writing is something that certainly deserves discussion.

My fear is a knee-jerk reaction to "dark" writing. Most of my students write the cliched "revenge" story, or turn in manuscripts that contain some sort of violence or subject matter many might consider objectionable. But as I told my creative-writing classes, there's a profound difference between imagining violence on the page and becoming the violence imagined. CW professors at any level are in a unique position among educators. Giving our students a blank page on which to write is oftentime akin to the psychologist giving a piece of paper and a box of crayons to a traumatized child. Students will reveal, in oftentimes constructive ways, amazing pains and injuries. But we are not psychologists. We are not therapists. And we certainly are not policemen enforcing laws in an intellectual domain.

In the years I've been teaching, I have had only one student who disturbed me in his writing. But that student was clearly troubled beyond the writing, and it was his actions in the classroom, not on the paper, that gave me pause. He also was a composition student, not a creative-writing student. And like any good professor, I talked to him and assisted him in getting the help he needed to deal with his past. Like others here have stated and most of us already know, writing can be a cathartic tool. If I didn't write, I think an essential part of me would explode. I would hate for the misguided actions of one troubled young man negatively impact what is, for many of my students, a liberating experience. And even though his writing is bad and not anything I would engourage, I will still defend the class that allowed him space in which to compose it, and the environment that might have been his only outlet other than his ultimate, tragic act.

well, writing IN the dark is dangerous. What if your BIC pen suddenly flipped and poked you in the eye?!

My turn to chime in. As both a professor and clinical psychologist, I can claim no special powers of prediction. His writing wasn't cathartic in the sense that it likely liberated him from feeling persecuted. It was likely the systematic paranoia of a schizophrenic. It's likely the shooter was a paranoid schizophrenic. Of the "pure" schizophrenics, the paranoid subtype is usually the most "organized" cognitively (as a blatant example, think of John Nash, the "beautiful mind" mathematician). The paranoid schizophrenic, statistically speaking, is also the most likely to engage in violence.

Would the writing itself prove useful in predicting violence? No, unless his writing was as explicit as a plan to enact a particular scenario. Even then, the rules around danger to self or other resulting in an involuntary hold are rather stringent. While this young man's pre-shooting behavior indicated the presence of severe psychiatric illness, the pieces only form a coherent picture in retrospect. Unfortunately, in the absence of a specific plan, there is often little that can be done from a mental health law perspective. The school could have done something administrative but only if there was sufficient evidence that he presented a clear and present danger. For example, if a patient of mine, within the context of my doctor-patient relationship, intimated that he felt persecuted by classmates and that he wanted to lash out at them still requires a fair amount of reasonable evidence to initiate an evaluation through at least two channels, often called "reporting situations." The first situation is the evaluation for involuntary detention, the so-called 5150, based on the patient's behavior that is deemed to be a danger to himself, or another, or is a danger to himself by virtue of grave disability. As a clinical psychologist I cannot actually admit my patient to a psychiatric facility; I can only start the ball rolling for a designated agent to initiate the involuntary hold evaluation (often this is the police or another designated official or a psychiatrist in a facility). The second "reporting situation" is the so-called Tarasoff situation wherein a patient presents a clear-and-present danger to an identifiable victim or victims. My obligation is to warn the victim and alert the authorities. Again, it requires a rather specific imminent threat to a readily identifiable victim or victims (I am going to kill my neighbor is one example; I am going to firebomb the bowling alley is another).

People have questioned why the mental health system failed this young man. In a way, it is surprising that he ever came into contact with them in the first place. It is difficult to get the attention of the mental health system, especially in a large metropolis.

As for the writing part, were the indications there? Only in retrospect and only in context of what he turned out to be.

I got a call this afternoon asking if I could substitute for a professor teaching a writing workshop in the class before mine. I said sure. Come to find out, the professor was "scared to teach that class" after one of his students wrote a short story vividly detailing the professor's torture and murder. A police report was filed. Psych Services was contacted. The student is not removed from the classroom, and the professor has now received a letter of reprimand, because the university fears a lawsuit.

Weird.

Weirder still, the rationale for asking me to substitute was that I had been "in the military, and you know all about firearms." Really? Thanks. Are you going to issue a pistol to me prior to entering class? Or are you just hoping I'll survive the initial round of gunfire and be able to tell you with absolute clarity the type of weapon used to shoot me.

It's all turned out to be much ado about nothing, as the class has been allowed to move on-line for the final weeks in the semester. But the class met right before mine and in the same classroom. Guess who'll be looking over his shoulder tomorrow...

Belay my last.

I will be substituting for the class after all.

There are so many problems, I don't even know where to begin.

I don't know the whole story yet.

I have to meet with the Dean, Associate Dean, and Department Chair prior to my taking over.

I feel like I'm about to walk barefooted through a mindfield. I'll let you know how it works out.