Entries for April 19, 2007

The revelations of the Virginia Tech shooter's clear history of mental health problems is renewing the debate over how universities can keep their campuses safe while respecting the rights of individual students, the University of North Carolina Daily Tar Heel reports. "Schools walk a real fine line," Johnne Armentrout, assistant director of counseling services at Wake Forest University, tells the Tar Heel. "The tricky thing is that they face lawsuits on both sides, either from not doing enough or from violating their students' privacy rights."

According to the story, federal law prohibits colleges from disclosing a student's psychological state to anyone without a waiver from the student or the belief that the student poses immediate danger to himself or others. But there's no easy way to tell when a troubled mind will snap. "There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in this country who might present with similar warning signs [as Cho] but never go on to commit an act like this, and that's the really tricky part," says Robert Murphy, executive director of the Center for Child and Family Health, a joint venture between UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke, and N.C. Central universities. --Kenneth Terrell

"When I found out about the Virginia Tech shootings, I felt disbelief and shock--probably everything that you felt, so I won't reiterate. When I heard the shooter was Asian, I thought: What if there's retaliation? Then: I hope to God he's not Chinese," writes an Asian-American University of Illinois student in today's Daily Illini. "And then, I realized I was racist. I had bought into the structure of distrust and narrowness that prejudice totters on . . . What does it matter to the victim's families whether their loved ones were killed by someone of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean descent?"

The writer, a senior in the school's business program, then goes on to express his support for an upcoming Korean film festival on campus that rumors suggest might be canceled because of anti-Asian sentiment in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. "I hope they don't cancel the series because if they don't, I'll watch every damn showing I can make," the writer declares. --K.T.

A University of Colorado-Boulder student who was arrested and suspended Tuesday for making classroom comments that were sympathetic with the Virginia Tech shooter was released on $1,000 bail yesterday, the Colorado Daily reports. The student's father, who cosigned for the boy's release, tells the Daily that his son was trying to add another side to the conversation. "He was participating in a purely academic discussion," the father says. "He was not playing the devil's advocate, but he was simply trying to show that the shooter was not inhuman."

But some students in the class interpreted the remarks as threats, according to the university police. "Everyone has a clear right to an education without being threatened," says CU-Boulder Police Commander Brad Wiesley. "Other students [in the student's class Tuesday] didn't take his comments as honest debate, and many said that they didn't feel safe coming back to class. People have a right to an education."

The American Civil Liberties Union has sided with the student and is working to have the charges dropped, according to the Daily. --K.T.