Educators Can Help Prevent Future Giffords Tragedies
The note said "I hope you die like that fat pig Ebert." The detective handed it back to me. We were sitting in my office at the University of Louisville. Someone, most likely a student in my Introduction to Humanities class, had left it for me to find.
The detective said, "It's not really a threat."
"No," I conceded, "it's not a straight out threat."
"Right," he said, "It's not, 'I am going to kill you.' It is just like, 'I hope you die.'"
"I understand," I said and shrugged, knowing now that the police would likely do nothing.
"Still," the detective added, "let's go ahead and do some paperwork and start a file."
"OK," I said, feeling better. "Just in case it gets worse." And it would.
By the time the meeting was over, we had selected a spot to hide a surveillance camera and discussed what I needed to do should I suddenly feel the need for protection.
Read the rest of this op-ed at AOL News.
Thanks as usual to Gina Misiroglu of Red Room for putting me in touch with the AOL people. It's just one of the great ways she's bringing traffic to Red Room and getting attention for Red Room's authors.
About Matthew
Currently a professor of English at the University of Louisville, I teach and publish on a wide range of literature, most often British Literature from Shakespeare to the Romantics along with contemporary Theory. I also work as a motorcycle mechanic, doing...
Connections
Causes Matthew Biberman Supports
Amnesty International
Matthew’s Favorite Books
Today's desert island list: Shakespeare, Milton, the Romantics--esp Keats and Coleridge, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Hart Crane, Berryman, Lowell...
This morning I was reminded
This morning I was reminded by the University of California that I needed to review the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's document called Active Shooter: How to Respond. In the same message, I was reminded that FERPA protects student privacy. I think Lucinda Roy covered this ground quite thoroughly in her book No Right to Remain Silent: The Tragedy of Virginia Tech. If you remember, she was the chair of the English Department and took Seung-Hui Cho on as an independent study after he was removed by professor request from a creative writing class. She did all the right things, got him to the student health center for counseling, etc. In any case, my point is that it is very difficult to get follow-up for a student (the student doesn't have to go to counseling) after making a report. Also, as a teacher, I see many kinds of behavior ranging from sullen to hostile to irrational to what I perceive as threatening. I'm not trained to evaluate a student's mental health. So while I agree that we can provide some potentially useful information about students, I don't know to what extent we can really "help prevent" these tragedies. It's a lot to ask of a teacher.
thanks for the response Jane
I know Lucinda Roy's account. I think she did everything she could. I am not sure the clinicians did all they could. I do not think Cho was diagnosed and treated correctly. You can't stop all these incidents. My only point was for teachers to be more open to look for the signs of mental illness. Also, I wanted to point out the parallels in the two cases (Bedell and Laugner). In the end I agree with Jeffrey Lieberman, chairman of the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry in New York City, when he says, "The path that led to Jared Loughner's horrific actions is, sadly, neither uncommon nor unprecedented. "He is a troubled youth who has exhibited signs of serious mental illness for years, which in his case were cast in the context of political ideology and rhetoric. ... The limited information that has emerged about him strongly suggests that he suffered from a treatable psychotic disorder. These tragedies can be prevented but require the social and political will to do so."