On-campus mental illness issues unique
description: By Dick Durbin RRSTAR.COM Posted Apr 17, 2008 @ 10:59 PM This week, our nation marked the anniversary of the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech that took 32 lives and wounded 17 other people. Just two months ago, our state was stunned to witness a similar tragic shooting at Northern Illinois University in which 5 students were killed and 17 were wounded. I cannot imagine the magnitude of heartbreak and pain for friends and families of those killed or the trauma borne by those who survived these tragedies. As we mourn the loss of so many promising young lives, it is important also to learn from these tragedies. So what are those lessons? The first is to consider the tortured mind of the shooter. Mental illness is an illness, not a curse. It can and should be treated. Many who receive appropriate counseling and medication lead normal, stable and happy lives. But our laws ignore this reality. We have created legal and financial obstacles to appropriate care. This year, for the first time in a decade, the U.S. Senate has passed a bill to give mental health parity with physical health under the law. The House of Representatives also has passed legislation, and we are negotiating a compromise to fulfill the promise of health parity for millions facing mental health problems. But the challenge of mental health on our college campuses is unique. Many mental illnesses manifest themselves in this period when young people leave the security of home and regular medical care. The responsibility for the students' well-being shifts many times to colleges and universities struggling with limited resources. The situation is growing worse. Studies show that 10 percent of college students have contemplated suicide and 45 percent have felt so depressed that it was difficult to function. Colleges also are encountering students who 10 to 20 years ago would not have been able to attend school because of mental illness, but who can do so today because of advances in treatment of such illnes…
creator: Dick Durbin
date: 2008-04-19
contributor: Kacey Beddoes
language: eng

Lessons from Blacksburg
description: By Armin Rosen PUBLISHED APRIL 19, 2007 It unfolded like a terrifying set-piece, and each new item of information seemed more trite and intuitive than the next: the killer had been a student. He had been a social outcast, homicidally contemptuous of the society that he felt had cast him out. The guns used had been purchased legally. And there had been warning signs that now seem to have stopped tantalizingly short of portending the coming carnage. "When this is all said and done," the online magazine Slate cited one blogger as writing a few hours after the shooting, "we will likely have an unhappy young person who probably had an unhealthy obsession with guns, violence, gory video games, and over the top blood-fest movies"-which means that, even in its horrifying randomness, the Virginia Tech shooting takes on a grim aspect of predictability. But what should this predictability teach us? Since noted poet and Virginia Tech English professor Lucinda Roy found Cho Seung-Hui unstable enough to justify contacting campus counseling services over 18 months prior to the attack, it could be argued that universities and society in general should be more aggressive in administering psychological help to those who obviously need it. We Americans are great believers in therapy: with nearly one in four adults seeking professional help and Adderall alone bringing in over a quarter-billion dollars in annual revenue, we, arguably, have put more faith in the redemptive powers of the clinical or prescriptive than any other society on earth. But it would be a mistake to let this past week's events reinforce this notion that normalcy can be clinically prescribed, or, as some have recommended, clinically imposed. As author Deepak Chopra appropriately noted in an interview with CNN, psychologist Abraham Maslow maintains that love and belonging are as fundamental to human existence as food and shelter. And the professional concern of a therapist for her patient can't fill basic emotional o…
creator: Armin Rosen (Author)/Shana Rubin (Photo)
date: 2008-02-18
contributor: Kacey Beddoes
rights: Tom Faure (tomfaure@gmail.com)
language: eng

Reflections on a Mass Homicide (Commentary)
description: (PDF, 30KB; Full text below.) Commentary Reflections on a Mass Homicide Jimmy Lee,1 MBBS, MMed (Psych), Tih-Shih Lee,1,2 MD, PhD, FRCP (C), Beng-Yeong Ng,1 MBBS, MMed (Psych), FAMS 1 Department of Psychiatry, Singapore General Hospital, Singapore2 Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, Singapore Address for Correspondence: Dr Tih-Shih Lee, Department of Psychiatry, Singapore General Hospital, Singapore, Outram Road, Singapore 169608. Email: tihshih.lee@gms.edu.sg Introduction The names "Virginia Tech" and "Cho" will be associated forever with the tragic mass homicide of 32 persons cum suicide by Seung-Hui Cho on 16 April 2007. In the aftermath, many questions have been posed: "What happened and why?", "Was he crazy?", "Could it have been prevented?", "Could it happen here?" This was the third mass killing in a US campus, with the largest number of fatalities. The first was in 1966 in the University of Texas with 16 dead and 31 wounded, then the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, in which 13 students were killed. We do not profess to know more about what happened in Blacksburg, Virginia, or Cho's neuropsychiatric condition than whatever is published in the popular press.1 But through a series of questions, we reflect on this tragedy, attempt to place it into a human and psychiatric perspective, and offer insights into if, and how, it can be averted in the future. Question 1: Was Cho insane? Cho was described as a shy and quiet child, who was good in mathematics, but struggled with English. There were allegations of him being taunted and bullied in school since young. Both his pastor and relatives had suspected he might be autistic and suggested professional assistance. There was no record of him being involved in overt violence except that he had harassed 2 female classmates, one of whom called in the campus police. He expressed suicidal ideation and was involuntarily committed by a judge in a mental health facility briefly for assessment. A psychiatrist wrote in his…
creator: Jimmy Lee, Tih-Shih Lee, and Beng-Yeong Ng
date: 2007-08-26
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Kirat Kaur (Ms) Editorial Executive Annals, Academy of Medicine, Singapore annals@academyofmedicine.edu.sg
language: eng

Enlightened
description: My youngest son, Travis Miller graduated from Virginia Tech in 2006, and my experiences goe back gto my early teens. As a woman, a Mom, and a researcher, the events of April 16, 2007, grabbed my full attention, and still do. You see, since 1993, I have been treated for a condition, called Bipolar/Manic Depression. My losses have been many, and severe, as in those 14 years, due to the disease, I had no judgment, no sense of reality. I have all my charts, and I now know I was very over medicated by my EX Dr of some 12 years. Life altering changes occured, for myself, and my 3 sons [who were not educated, nor had therapy] which resulted in Dad walking away, after 5 years. Treating mental illness, as something one chooses, or can "snap out of" is extreamly uneducated. The past 3 years, I have dedicated myself to research, and to understanding the past, as to understand the present, and hopefuly simplifly the future. Including my sons somewhat in the exploration, led to estrangement, and Family Protective Orders. I was not included in my son's graduation of 2006. Isolation, since 1993, continues from my family, but I now have a better understanding, throught my faith, Buddhism. I accept my part, and thankfully, injoy a full remission, which requires no prescriptive medication at present. But there is still fall out, and I am fighting the good fight, to bring awareness to Virginia, the Nation on the subject of Mental Health. Trying to understand April 16, 2007, I did know perhaps better that most, how Cho might have acted out his terror, his emense anger, at his perceived rejection, his isolation. I think he fell through the many "cracks" as it were, and that as a state with a D- rating by Nami, [mental health ass.] we have the chance for change. I wrote a Letter to the Roanoke times, on a bill before Congress, up in September for vote, on teaching K-12, good mental health. Yes, we need the tools, we need the education, to demistify, what is baseicaly a "chemical imbalnce…
creator: Dona Wheeler
date: 2007-08-19
contributor: Dona Wheeler
language: eng

Violence by mentally ill not the norm
description: By:Sarah A. Newlin Posted: 4/27/07 I am writing in response to Richard Poskozim's opinion piece in the 4/25 issue of The Lantern. In the article, the author seems to imply that Cho's motivation to kill somehow originated from his alleged mental illness: "After everything that's come out about him, I think it's pretty safe to say his motivation was that he was crazy." While it is clear that something had deeply distressed Mr. Cho, one should be careful about jumping to conclusions about how mental illness played a role in this tragic event. Numerous studies have shown that it is incredibly rare for someone with a mental illness to commit gross acts of violence, especially on the scale of the Virginia Tech shootings. Violence is no more prevalent among individuals with mental illnesses than among the general public. In actuality, those suffering from a mental illness are more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators. Furthermore, I am concerned that the focus on the shooter's possible mental illness will cause many students on college campuses who suffer from mental illnesses to not seek mental health services or to be feared and shunned by their peers, leading to their further isolation and discrimination. If any positives can come out of this horrible event, I hope that one will be a larger discussion about the need for increased recognition of mental health issues among college students and the need for adequate treatment, support and recovery resources on college campuses. I ask that The Lantern staff take this into consideration as they continue to cover the tragic circumstances surrounding the Virginia Tech shootings. Sarah A. Newlin Program Manager Campus Suicide Prevention Program -- Original Source:The Lantern - April 27, 2007
creator: Sarah A. Newlin
publisher: The Lantern
date: 2007-08-16
contributor: Sara Hood
rights: GERRICK LEWIS <lewis.1030@osu.edu>
language: eng

Threats to Civil Liberties arising from the fallout of the Virginia Tech Forcible-disarmament Frenzy
description: May 1, 2007 4:51 pm An article from a new contributor: Loren Bliss THERE ARE TWO EXCEPTIONALLY grave dangers to American liberty arising from the present, post-Virginia-Tech forcible-disarmament frenzy. These are: (1)-The criminalization of even the mildest forms of mental illness, as proposed by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), in HR 297. (2)-The criminalization of political protest and dissent, as proposed by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, (D-NJ), in S 1237. Each of these measures is enthusiastically supported by the Bush Regime. The Lautenberg bill was written at White House/Justice Department request — a leading Democratic senator serving as the mouthpiece for a despised Republican administration — an unprecedented act of collaboration with the most corrupt regime in U.S. history. Once again, opposition to the Second Amendment is being used as a diversion behind which to conceal an all-out, bipartisan attack on the entire Bill of Rights- including, via S 1237, repeal of the presumption of innocence that is the cornerstone of all English-language jurisprudence. Meanwhile, welcome to the New American Reich, where (if McCarthy, Lautenberg and Bush have their way), anybody deemed a mental case, an effective labor activist or a disruptive political nonconformist will soon be forcibly disarmed, denied all rational means of self defense and thereby condemned to perpetual victimhood. ********* Modern efforts to criminalize mental dysfunction have a long history dating back to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany and are typically part of a broader right-wing agenda of oppression and euthanasia. But in the United States, the primary advocates of criminalization are the forcible disarmament cult and the Communitarian movement, members of which universally (and often vehemently) claim to be leftists and/or "progressives." The Communitarians have argued for at least two decades that diagnosis of mental illness should instantly terminate not only all one's civil rights but also strip one …
creator: Loren Bliss
date: 2007-08-09
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution 2.5
language: eng

Police identify Norris Hall shooter as Va. Tech student
description: Cho attended Northern Va. high school, peers describe him as 'loner' Maria Tchijov and Thomas Madrecki, Cavalier Daily Senior Writers BLACKSBURG, Va. -- Police identified Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old Virginia Tech student, as the gunman responsible for killing 30 victims Monday in Virginia Tech's Norris Hall. Some who knew him described Cho as "a complete loner" and the author of "disturbing" and "excessively violent" plays. Cho was found dead among the carnage that spanned four rooms and a nearby stairwell in Norris Hall. Cho, a native of South Korea, was linked to the murder weapon through a fingerprint contained in immigration documents. Ballistics tests confirmed that one of the two guns found at Norris Hall was also used at the shooting that took place two hours earlier in West Ambler Johnston dormitory. While police said it is likely that the two shootings are related, the investigation is ongoing. An ongoing investigation Cho was an English major at the university from Centreville, Va. Peers from Cho's middle school in Centreville said he was quiet, shy and withdrawn. "He was made fun of a lot by everybody," said Samuel Linton, a homeroom classmate of Cho's during seventh and eighth grade. "He was a complete loner, he never said a word ... he had no interaction with teachers -- he just stared like he wasn't paying attention." David Gearheart, who also attended middle school with Cho, said he talked to Cho once or twice, but that talking to him was just that -- talking to somebody rather than with somebody. "He had a lot of crazy writings in his notebook and stuff, how he hated Americans," Gearheart said. Linton said Cho was once reported to the principal for writing down the names of people he was supposedly planning to kill. "It was like a hit list," Linton said. "They found one in his locker." Linton said people "constantly" talked about how Cho might be the type of person that would one day attempt to kill someone. Officials at a press conference yesterday…
creator: Maria Tchijov and Thomas Madrecki
publisher: The Cavalier Daily
date: 2007-07-31
contributor: Sara Hood
rights: Meggie Bonner <meggiebonner@gmail.com>
language: eng

Thoughts About Media Coverage of the Virginia Tech Tragedy
description: posted 5.01.07 Otto Wahl, Ph.D., University of Hartford The tragic death of 33 students at Virginia Tech has shocked and saddened us all. Given the mental health aspects of the situation, it is not surprising that there has been much in the coverage about mental illnesses and their treatment. Unfortunately, the articles and editorials that followed the shootings have often been troubling in what they convey to the public about mental illnesses and mental health interventions. One troubling aspect of the media coverage has been the frequent vilification and dehumanization of the troubled young man who perpetrated the killings. Appropriately sympathetic descriptions of the background and lives of the "32" victims were widespread, and such descriptions helped us to better appreciate the tragedy on a more personal level. However, descriptions of the 33rd person who died in the tragedy, Cho Seung-Hui, focused almost exclusively on his pathology, his anger, and his menacing manner. Some media sources characterized Cho as motivated by "meanness;" others labeled him as a "fiend," a "psychopath," or "just plain "evil." Such coverage ignored the fact that Cho's death—and much of his life—was also a tragedy. His alienation, isolation, anger, and ultimate suicide are probably not the life goals he set out for himself. Much of the media coverage did discuss Cho's mental health, but mostly without notable empathy for his difficulties. Related is the mistaken implication in coverage of Cho's actions that mental illness and violence are synonymous. The widespread images of Cho brandishing weapons epitomized the already prevalent public image of the "menacing madman," and that image was underscored further by the fear-inducing labels Cho was given in many media accounts, such as "maniac" and "psycho" and worse. Likewise, the repeated discussions of the need to protect the college community—and the larger community—from such individuals served to reinforce unwarranted public …
creator: Otto Wahl
date: 2007-07-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Otto Wahl (owahl@hartford.edu)
language: eng

Dangerous People?
description: By Ari Rabkin Apr 26 2007 Between the Lines One of the striking facts about the Virginia Tech shootings was how predictable the murderer's identity was. The authorities knew long before his rampage that Cho Seung-Hui was not merely "troubled," but dangerous. A court had ruled two years previously that he posed an "imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness." As a result, he was civilly committed to an outpatient mental-health clinic. He checked out the next day, however, without being effectively treated. In the wake of the shootings, many commentators have decried the gradual decline in involuntary commitment to mental health facilities. The courts, so the thinking goes, should have been more aggressive, and should have committed Cho to an inpatient facility, and not released him until he was judged to be no longer dangerous. But this sort of confinement poses awkward questions. The mentally ill are confined — locked up — not because they have done anything wrong, but because they might be dangerous in the future. Sun Podcast: A podcast is available for this column. Click here to listen to or to download it.Sun Podcast: A podcast is available for this column. Click here to listen to or to download it.To lock people up, not because they are criminals, but because they are dangerous, subverts many of our normal notions of due process. To go free, a criminal defendant needs to rebut a factual allegation; he needs to show that he didn't commit a particular act. A prisoner confined for being dangerous, however, is in a much more precarious position. "Danger" cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury of laymen, but can only be assessed by expert judgment. To avoid making such judgments, American civil law does not have a general category of "dangerous persons" other than the mentally ill. Sane individuals can normally be imprisoned only after a criminal conviction, for a crime they have already committed. Civil confinement, as it is called, i…
creator: Ari Rabkin
date: 2007-07-10
contributor: Sara Hood
rights: Jonny Lieberman <jdl46@cornell.edu>, <lieberman.jonny@gmail.com>
language: eng

Idealism v. Cho
description: By Jeremy Siegman Apr 27 2007 Cosmology on the Rocks It always feels weird swallowing real-world events like the Virginia Tech massacre in the hazy cosmopolitanism of Uris Library. Cornell and its libraries, after all, are fleeing from the bustling Manhattans, from the culture of CNN and even the busy humming of our own town. It feels like fleeing from all that is extremist, religious or vulgar. And the Promised Land is the Hill, which, legend has it, is populated by a super-strong Atlas who can not only pick up the planet, but also stop it from warming too, and just foster utopia in general, all at the reasonable rate of only $40,000 a year (tax-free if you use Big Red Bucks!). This detached cosmopolitan Cornell is proud, richly endowed, but can be shaken. When an English major murders 32 people at a university, our university shakes. Finally, something has hit home; but utopianism hits back. Our president responds in the eloquent universalism we know best: "We are one; one community, one people, one planet." This is me responding, stuck in Uris Library because it's raining outside; I'm stuck, too, in this Skortonian universalism, as I consider the murderer, his condition and ours too. "Three Pro-Gun Bills Pending in Nevada Legislature!" exclaims a headline from NRA.org. You should press your senators to pass them, urges this National Rifle Association writer, so people can have the freedom to not register their handguns! Gun activists argue that Cho Seung-Hui should have been lawfully prevented from buying his .22-caliber and 9mm guns because of his mental illness. They also argue that gun-control laws should be toned down! This is utterly strange, this exaltation of the Second Amendment at a time like this. Considered in a vacuum, there's really nothing wrong with the right to bear arms. But when the bald eagle of America is made to hold rifles in its talons (the NRA logo) — a powerful symbol is crafted. It speaks loudly for a lot of Americans. The symbolic exa…
creator: Jeremy Siegman
publisher: Cornell Daily Sun
date: 2007-07-10
contributor: Sara Hood
rights: Jonny Lieberman <jdl46@cornell.edu>, <lieberman.jonny@gmail.com>
language: eng

Ire and Vice: The Dead
description: May 22, 2007 By Darren Franich Suicide is so much less embarrassing than homicide. Can you imagine the shitstorm maelstrom that would engulf our pretty campus if someone shot five people? Shot them so their blood splattered across the tables of Stern dining hall. Or their blood covered the pull-out desks in the chem building. Or their blood filled the fountains until the water sprayed dark bitter red. Five Stanford students dead. Hell, it doesn't have to be five. Make it three. Make it one. Think of the black cloud that would descend on our lives. Our own little Virginia Tech. The blood, damn it, the fucking blood! Pouring out of open wounds. Choked out of lungs that will never breathe again. On our campus. On our hands. Flowing out of pale bodies until the heart just stops pumping, tired, empty. Fortunately, people don't kill other people at Stanford. They just kill themselves. No one ever talks about the suicides, but everyone talks about how no one ever talks about the suicides. "Can you believe," we shake our heads, "four suicides at Stanford in one year, and nobody notices, nobody cares." Someone says, "I heard there were five." "That's what I'm talking about." Stanford is killing people. We shouldn't hold that against Stanford. There is so much joy here. There are thousands of students who live happy lives of quiet desperation, for whom suicide is never more than a passing fancy, the dream of an eternal vacation from one's own brain. But for a school that prides itself on its happiest-place-on-earth reputation, one suicide is a misfortune. Five is just awkward. To a high school senior, Stanford is the anti-Cornell: happy people living happy lives under the happy, happy sun. And now there is a suicide epidemic. Intelligent young people — who have worked hard their whole lives to get here, who have so much to look forward to — are eliminating themselves from the humanity continuum. Asphyxiation. It's not a good way to go. These people would have been great. …
creator: Darren Franich
publisher: Stanford Daily
date: 2007-06-13
contributor: Sara Hood
rights: Permissions granted by James Hohmann Editor-in-Chief The Stanford Daily <jhohmann@stanford.edu>
language: eng

Op-Ed: An open letter to President Hennessy
description: May 14, 2007 By Lisette Rimer Dear Dr. Hennessy, Thank you for your op-ed piece May 4th on preventing future tragedies such as Virginia Tech. It was forwarded to me byone of your students who suffered the loss of a friend, my son Patrick Wood. Patrick graduated from Stanford in 2005 with distinction in math. He loved the school, had many friends there, and was even treated for depression there. In January before he graduated, he was hospitalized for, as he explained to me, "having thoughts of suicide." He was committed to the Stanford hospital for five days, but proclaimed that he was OK, mostly bored, and didn't belong there. The psychiatrist in charge at the hospital agreed that Pat was OK and should be permitted to return to school as long as he continued therapy. He saw a therapist and a psychiatrist on campus and renewed his medication. His mood was up and down, but he continued an active social life and good communication with us. He was excited about an internship at Siemens in Berlin, Germany, which he began after graduation. He had applied for the internship through the Stanford Center in Berlin. He suspended his therapy for the summer with plans to return in September for the computer science co-term program, but he loved Berlin too much to leave just yet. Another friend from Stanford was arriving to work in the American Embassy there, and so Patrick obtained a leave of absence and continued to work at Siemens through the fall. All the while, he made many friends, spoke and wrote fluent German, went to concerts with colleagues at Siemens, and maintained close contact with the Stanford Center. He could often be heard playing the piano there just as he had done at Haus Mitt. He wrote about a "mini-depression" before he came home to Connecticut for Christmas vacation. We thought a medication refill would be the answer. His twin sister and older brother were home, along with cousins, aunts, and uncles. It was the usual busy but fun time. Pat later told friends…
creator: Lisette Rimer
publisher: Stanford Daily
date: 2007-06-13
contributor: Sara Hood
rights: Permissions granted by James Hohmann Editor-in-Chief The Stanford Daily <jhohmann@stanford.edu>
language: eng

Pychoanalysis won't fully explain VT killer
description: Published: Friday, April 27, 2007 Opinion articles By: Carol Duh My parents immigrated into this country in 1982. My parents told me a Taiwanese parable while I attended the same schools as Mike Pohle, one of the 32 victims of last week's massacre. In the story, a teacher took his class on a field trip to the mountains of Taiwan. On the way home, they encountered a swarm of killer bees. The teacher removed his clothing to attract the bees away from the children to his flesh. I heard the echoes of this parable while reading about Liviu Librescu, the professor who blocked the classroom door with his body while the gunman demanded entry. While he did this, students escaped through the windows. No doubt that being stung by bullets was agonizing. There was little dignity in these painful deaths, only in their sacrifice. And what of the bee? The bee who stings out of cowardice dies soon after, so we cannot ask. Panicked, we call in the world-class bee experts to explain the situation. This response, though gratifying, is in vain. Like Wall Street analysts who offer their best predictions after the fact, the analysis will not provide us with the protection we need. The bee and Seung Cho perceived threats that were not real; their behavior escapes appreciation. Let's try anyway. His parents were South Korean immigrants who sent a daughter to Princeton and a son to Virginia Tech — a feat worthy to boast of across many oceans. College is the frame upon which immigrants hang their hopes, but sometimes it comes at a price. The drive that steers us toward hard work is often frustrated by the apparent frivolity that pervades American campus culture. Fraternity keggers, society taps — these seem to be the cornerstones of the American college student's anxiety. To the ethic of a different culture, they are laughable. Seung Cho's complaints, through lunacy, tap the drumbeat of this disappointment. Seung Cho's two defining characteristics continue to be his mental health and his …
creator: Sara Hood
date: 2007-06-11
contributor: Sara Hood
rights: Editor-in-Chief, Yale Daily News - Sarah Mishkin <sarah.mishkin@gmail.com>
language: eng

The tragedy of Virginia Tech is partly a tragedy of bureaucracy
description: From the Editor May/June 2007 by Kathrin Day Lassila '81 The tragedy of Virginia Tech is partly a tragedy of bureaucracy. I don't mean the sort of complaint people usually make about bureaucracy -- too much paperwork and red tape. I mean the opposite. Too few records. Too little discussion and sharing of information. Too few staff, perhaps. I'm not blaming the state of Virginia or Virginia Tech for failing to stop a determined murderer. But enough bureaucracy, of the right kind, would have given them a chance. The gun salesman would have known Seung-Hui Cho had a history of mental illness and wasn't entitled to buy guns. The associate dean who told a worried professor last fall that she hadn't heard of any previous problems would have known about the two complaints to the police and the judge's ruling that Cho was a danger to himself. The competing needs for privacy and protection can't be perfectly balanced. Colleges and universities serve a vulnerable demographic. Usually, "major mental illness first shows itself somewhere between the ages of 17 to around 25," says Lorraine Siggins, chief psychiatrist at Yale Health Services. Against those rare but terrible events, universities need discreet and careful systems. If a student has trouble and the trouble is resolved, the university has to leave the student alone to live the ordinary turbulent life of a young adult, in privacy, without stigma. But if trouble recurs, the right administrator has to be able to find out fast that this isn't the first time. The competing needs for privacy and protection can't be perfectly balanced. After VT, says Betty Trachtenberg, dean of student affairs at Yale College, university officials everywhere thought, There, but for the grace of God . . . But it's easier to have good systems and enough staff at a wealthy, relatively small private institution than a large public institution. Siggins speaks of a "web" of people at Yale who act as a safety net. Medical privacy rules prevent her s…
creator: Kathrin Day Lassila
date: 2007-06-11
contributor: Sara Hood
rights: Permission granted by author Kathrin Lassila, kathrin.lassila@yale.edu
language: eng

The vanity of reason: making sense of the Virginia Tech tragedy
description: Gene Koo - Thursday, April 19th, 2007 @ 5:52 pm Soon after an initial outpouring of shock and grief at the senseless murder of 32 members of the Virginia Tech community, we began seeking explanations for the tragedy. By all accounts Seung-Hui Cho, perpetrator and 33rd victim of this rampage, was a severely disturbed young man; the snippets of video released so far by NBC reveal profound paranoia. Inevitably our questions turn to what would lead him to commit such a heinous crime. We yearn for insight into his motives. Why did he do it? What was he thinking? These questions are familiar to me. I have asked them myself about my own mother, who probably developed paranoid schizophrenia some 15 years ago. I write "probably" because, like water filling a tub, the disease crept over her, imperceptibly, until suddenly it spilled forth in a flood. And somewhere in that tub, the loving woman who had been my mother drowned. I cannot know, but looking at the face in the video aired by NBC, I would guess that the real Seung-Hui Cho, someone capable of the kind of laughter and anger you and I would understand, perished long before he pulled the trigger on himself. People of sound mind often assume that individuals with mental illness think like we do: therefore, they must be misinformed, wrong-headed, or just pretending. We are, essentially, in denial. We delude ourselves into believing that we can figure these people out, and in so doing, learn how to "fix" them. In the first few years of my mother's illness, I challenged her claims that the "Chinese mafia" were spying on and stealing from her. Using lawyer's logic, I repeatedly demonstrated why it made no sense for criminals to go to such great lengths to inflict such petty wounds upon her. She would always win these fights, because madness is not susceptible to reason. What I lacked in communicating with her was not logic, but rather imagination. -- "Did you want to inject as much misery in our lives as you can," asks Mr. Cho…
creator: Gene Koo
date: 2007-06-07
contributor: Sara Hood
rights: CreativeCommons-Attribution-Sharealike 2.5
language: eng

Coding Gun Control
description: Gene Koo - April 21, 2007 @ 6:42 pm · Filed under Code / Code A report in today's New York Times illustrates both the promise and the difficulties of (legal) code as (software) code (U.S. Rules Made Killer Ineligible to Purchase Gun). Apparently, slight discrepancies between the wording of Virginia and federal laws that disqualify the "mentally defective" from purchasing a handgun created a gap that enabled Seung-Hui Cho to purchase the weapons he used to carry out his killing spree: ...[T]he form that Virginia courts use to notify state police about a mental health disqualification addresses only the state criteria, which list two potential categories that would warrant notification to the state police: someone who was "involuntarily committed" or ruled mentally "incapacitated." However, Mr. Cho belonged to a third category: "determination by a court, board, commission or other lawful authority" that as a result of mental illness, the person is a "danger to himself or others." Thus, a special justice's order that he seek outpatient care and that also declared him an imminent danger to himself was never transmitted to the federal system of handling background checks for handgun purchases. The article mentions Representative Carolyn McCarthy's efforts to "automate their criminal history records so computer databases used to conduct background checks on gun buyers are more complete." McCarthy (who happens to represent my hometown) introduced in January H.R. 297. The bill would require state officials to report disqualifications to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) as well as provide funds to fund "establish or upgrade information and identification technologies for firearms eligibility determinations" and "improve the automation and transmittal to federal and state record repositories" disqualifying factors. Monday's tragedy offers an extreme example of what happens when jurisdictions fail to reconcile discrepancies in their laws. The answer…
creator: Gene Koo
date: 2007-06-06
contributor: Sara Hood
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Gene Koo (gkoo@cyber.law.harvard.edu)
language: eng

Cho Seung-Hui: A Lone Deranged Gunman?
description: Thursday, April 19. 2007 As all of America mourns the deaths which occurred on the Virginia Tech campus, bloggers are drawing comparisons to the body count that issues daily from Iraq. See a particularly poignant post from Floyd Rudmin of commondreams.org titled "32 Senseless Deaths: A Chance for Empathy, Change of Heart, and Change of Course" which concludes: The tragedy at Virginia Tech was caused by lone gunman, probably deranged. It was a one-time event. It is finished. The tragedy in Iraq was caused by the US government, with the over-whelming support of the US Congress, most of the US media, and much of the US population. This war was planned and executed by rational men and women, none of them deranged. The US decided to start the war against Iraq. The US decided to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq. The US decided to destroy the Iraqi government and to disband its police and army. The US decided to send too few soldiers to secure the nation after doing these destructive deeds. And the tragedy of Iraq is not a one-time event. It is not finished. It continues, apparently without end. By many reports, the US is now preparing to start another war, this time against Iran. Americans feeling the shock and grief of the tragedy at Virginia Tech should look into their hearts and realize that they through their government are bringing this same tragedy again, and again, and again, and again, and again, endlessly and needlessly, to other people in the world who also have hearts that can be torn out, who also feel grief and loss when family and friends are suddenly killed when doing ordinary things of life, like going to school. Tragic deaths force us to feel our humanity and to see we are similar to others in the world. The tragic deaths in Virginia might serve to motivate Americans to curb their militarism and to minimize the tragedies of sudden death that they have been bringing to other families in the world. Read the full article. It is heartening to witness a vigo…
creator: David Barker
date: 2007-06-06
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5
language: eng