frightening student

[poiuy]

I hear colleagues talk about which classrooms are more dangerous in the case of a mass shooter or discuss door locking mechanisms as if they are discussing car maintenance. There is a political failure, but these kinds of anxieties just aren't justified by the risk.

<snip>

They are rational actions, because people have no faith in the political or social systems that would theoretically prevent being a victim of gun violence or mass shootings. So we have to do our own work.

<snip>


But, even if these things weren't disruptive to enjoyment of life and doing your job, they don't help. Individual vigilance isn't going to prevent mass shootings, nor is carrying a gun of your own, nor spending your time thinking about how to barricade your room, nor worrying about the behavior of every student who seems a bit off. ... but there are just limitations to what individuals can do.

We had to attend an 'active shooter training' a couple of weeks ago at my institution, this was just before the tragedy in Nashville. In that training, faculty and staff were specifically asked to (1) report students whose behavior seemed off to the mental health systems in place in the University, and how these systems connected with University and town police; and (2) to observe the layout of every classroom we are going to teach in, to know what locks, barricades, and escape routes are possible. That day lots of us learned that 'y bar' is not Ȳ (expected value of the sample mean) but is the thing that makes a door swing shut.   

My behavior has certainly changed as a result, and I have now started looking at rooms, doors, and routes wherever I am.  I will report students to the mental health system even though I have little faith in their ability to prevent a tragedy, especially in a region where basic gun controls are being removed year by year. This is a dreadful societal failure. I am an aging female with physical limitations, not freakin' Jack Reacher.

The Nashville teachers had received a similar training and put it into place, so that the numbers of victims were comparatively few though even one is too many.

[Caracal]

Sure, but a statement of desire or intent to shoot someone IS an objective threat, and should be treated as such.   It strains credultity that the OP's campus security, mental health, and local cops would ignore such a type of remark, and continue to view him as not a threat.

Happens all the time. For some of the most egregious examples, see Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech, Murad Dervish at U Arizona, and the unnamed six-year old who shot his teacher in Newport News, Virginia.

I have been told personally by a dean that a disruptive student could not be removed from one of my courses because he had already paid for it.

For what it's worth Dervish was expelled and banned from the university, but the police determined that there wasn't enough evidence to charge him with making threats.

[Morden]

Many, many years ago now I had a student who submitted a half-burned piece of paper in a greasy folder instead of the required essay (on a play about Lizzie Borden, unfortunately). The essay(?) talked about the need for violence. I gave it an F. He made no direct threats, but I was scared. I reported the incident to the university and kept the folder for years, just in case something happened. He told me his fraternity had called the police on him, but nothing came of it. I had that class on such a tight timeline for group activities because of this person ( I was worried he would go off on a dangerous tangent), but none of that showed up in the course evals. I don't know what ever happened to him; I hope he got some psychological help. But the experience wounded me (cisgender female) deeply.

[Wahoo Redux]

I can't give the details since this is an ongoing issue with a student, and it is not my story to tell.

But I can say that it is amazing how close to the line a student can get without admin or counselors taking any real action other than documenting incidents, leaving the professors to nervously deal with the problem.

[kaysixteen]

All this is true, but the key point here still seems to be that the kid was also investigated by the local cops, who are not on the uni's payroll and have no incentive to cover things up for it.   How much do we necessarily want to preemptorally wish to exile a student because, well, maybe, the cops, security dept, and mental health folks all collectively might have erred?

[ergative]

I just went back to the original post to remind myself what this student has been doing.

is specific paranoid delusions include the view that many specific people at the school are terrorists who are controlling his mind and planning to blow up the school. He has repeatedly expressed these views to specific professors. He views women in general as terrorists and is really, really angry at feminists.

Whether or not he is a danger to others, he sounds like he's incapable of behaving himself properly in class. I know that Kay is a big proponent of treating students as if they are responsible adults who must take full responsibility for their behavior. Isn't there a way to to ban this student from class on the basis that he's not behaving properly? Regardless of whether he's going to show up with a gun, surely we can hold the line on 'no sexist rants in class' and 'no accusing classmates or colleagues of terrorism and mind control in class'

[Caracal]

observe the layout of every classroom we are going to teach in, to know what locks, barricades, and escape routes are possible. That day lots of us learned that 'y bar' is not Ȳ (expected value of the sample mean) but is the thing that makes a door swing shut.   

My behavior has certainly changed as a result, and I have now started looking at rooms, doors, and routes wherever I am.

Yeah, sorry, I just won't and can't do this. Our personal risk is just not high enough to justify this kind of thing and it's really unhealthy behavior to engage in.

Since 1990 there have been 26 shootings that killed more than 2 people at colleges. There are more than 5000 colleges and universities in the country. It's very unlikely there will even be a shooting at your school, and, if there is ,your chance of being involved in it is very small. That just doesn't justify walking around always planning for an attack.

[larryc]

Hoo boy this post brings back suppressed memories of my own scary student from a dozen years back. He'd send me emails that I should watch my back and the dean of students would tell me "Oh that is not a threat. I have ruled that it is not a threat so that issue is closed." My own dean pushed back but it did no good. And even my own dean got mad at me when I emailed her that the student was mentally unbalanced and should be removed from campus. He could sue if he got ahold of that email, didn't I understand? "Dean," I told her, "I am leaving a paper trail so my survivors can sue this institution if something happens to me. And I am printing out everything and keeping it in a folder at home."

Eventually that DoS moved on and a new one came in and the scary student pulled his shit with a new professor and was permanently expelled. I testified in support, reading from the sheaf of emails I shared with the committee while he looked daggers at me. I looked both ways before I walked out of my house for several years. Here are a few things I would have done differently in retrospect:

File reports with local police as well as campus police. Your admin won't like it but too bad. See what it takes to get a restraining order for example. Speak frankly with them. "I feel like there is a high possibility of violence from this individual." You want to leave them concerned but also worried about how it will look if they don't do anything.

Encourage others to do the same--but never in writing.

Document incidents in writing in the form of an email. Send it to whoever is in charge of these matters but cc judiciously. The tone should be neutral and factual but also alarming. Subject line "Continued threatening behavior from a student." "Campus safety concern." Again you want them to worry about how it will look if they don't do anything and something happens and these emails go to the press.

Encourage others to do the same--but never in writing.

I also think the Title 9 approach has merit. Explore that.

My own scary student just went away after his expulsion. He sent some odd emails to various people for a year or two but then just vanished. I just googled him and found nothing much, but then he went by a couple of names.

[ergative]

Ok, here's my story about scary students.

My mother, who taught composition at the local CC, had a student bring a gun to class to talk to her about his grade.

'Is it loaded?' she asked.
'Of course it's loaded,' he said. 'What's the point of having a gun if it's not loaded?'

The conversation proceeded entirely normally from there, except that he had a big, loaded shotgun in his hand. She kept waiting for a colleague to peak through the door of the classroom door and observe that a student was talking to his professor with a gun in his hand, but she was so shocked that she went on autopilot, which for her meant calm, collected conversation. Later, colleagues said they did see the conversation, but she seemed fine, so they didn't call the police.

Only later, after the student had left (without harming anyone), did the police come. Because, in our state, carrying a loaded gun was not a crime, the only thing they could possibly charge him with was threatening her. But to charge him with that, he needed to have frightened her. So the question came down to, 'Did you feel frightened?'

Of course she felt frightened! She felt so frightened she could not remember a word of the conversation that took place between them, So when the cops asked if she felt frightened, the best she could say was, 'I must have been!'

(I've always thought that a better answer might have been something like, 'I've literally blocked out everything that happened in that conversation, so Im going to say that I was so scared I couldn't think straight.' But then, she was so scared she couldn't think straight, so we've got to go easy on her for suboptimal responses when the cops took her statement.)

Anyway, that wasn't good enough for them, so no one did anything about the student who brought a loaded gun to campus to talk to his composition professor about his grade.

But then, he didn't shoot her. Does that mean that the university and the police made the right decision?