frightening student

[Kron3007]

Actually, what K16 says rings partly true to me, as I know that most forms of resolution are confidential, and even if they were not, no agency would necessarily feel obligated to inform the initial complainant of how the problem was resolved (unless it was by, say, a trial or hearing in which they were a witness, but even then, they aren't officially informed of the resolution).  That being said, I know how things can slip through the cracks or be resolved in a matter that is probably too superficial.

True,.but it is also true that many mentally disturbed people are very capable of hiding it at times.  In many cases it comes in fits and spurts, and many are quite intelligent.  It is also true that police are not psychologists either, and are often limited to only looking at if a crime has been committed, or another offense on which they can act, otherwise their hands are tied even if they agree   This is a major reason we see so many cases where mass shooters had been reported, but nothing could be done. 

So, just because police and others have dismissed it, doesn't mean there isn't a problem, just that the student has not crossed any lines where they can do anything.  This is the unfortunate consequence of freedom, that we often cannot act until it is too late.

I really don't have any good suggestions for the OP, but hope it all works out. 

[Caracal]

Mass shootings are exceedingly rare, to the point of being negligible risk.

So are plane crashes, but that doesn't mean we don't find ways to thoughtfully prevent them.

Right, and those systems mean that when people fly on planes they don't think they should be in charge of assessing and managing dangers and risks. That's good, because we don't have the information or the knowledge to accurately assess those risks and trying to do so would just induce anxiety. The system isn't perfect, planes do occasionally crash and sometimes these crashes involve failures of oversight, but the system is designed to figure out what went wrong and prevent similar things from happening again, even though crashes are quite rare.

Mass shootings are also rare, and the individual risk is quite low, but our political system has completely failed to address them (Or gun violence in general which kills far more people than the mass shootings that get so much attention) The result is that some people try to mitigate and manage their own risk. That's understandable, but it isn't effective and it certainly isn't healthy. What scares me is the way that this kind of thing seems to becoming a sort of societal neurosis. People talk about being afraid in public places and scanning crowds always looking for signs of danger as if these are rational actions. 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.

[apl68]

Mass shootings are exceedingly rare, to the point of being negligible risk.

I'd be interesting in knowing the number of planned mass shootings, or even individual shootings in similar environments, that are imminent but prevented. We've had several incidents at our own place where people with some degree of nefarious intent have been disarmed, and one at the local high school. That's in addition to one local mass shooting (at our high school, several killed, over 20 wounded), one local college mass shooting (~10 killed, a similar number injured at a university in a nearby town), and several incidents at our own place where people with some degree of nefarious intent have been disarmed. This is since I moved to town.  I guess compared to the millions of kids in high school and college, that's an infinitesimal fraction. It doesn't feel like a negligible risk, though. And for those of us who are female, we know that an obsessed misogynist threatening women is not rare at all. Nor is a violent man murdering a woman. Women are aware of the threat all the time, and not unjustifiably.

Yes.  That's why I'm fully prepared to give the OP the benefit of the doubt for justifiable conceern, even though the statistical probability is that the scary student won't do any actual harm.

[ciao_yall]

Mass shootings are exceedingly rare, to the point of being negligible risk.

So are plane crashes, but that doesn't mean we don't find ways to thoughtfully prevent them.

Right, and those systems mean that when people fly on planes they don't think they should be in charge of assessing and managing dangers and risks. That's good, because we don't have the information or the knowledge to accurately assess those risks and trying to do so would just induce anxiety. The system isn't perfect, planes do occasionally crash and sometimes these crashes involve failures of oversight, but the system is designed to figure out what went wrong and prevent similar things from happening again, even though crashes are quite rare.

Mass shootings are also rare, and the individual risk is quite low, but our political system has completely failed to address them (Or gun violence in general which kills far more people than the mass shootings that get so much attention) The result is that some people try to mitigate and manage their own risk. That's understandable, but it isn't effective and it certainly isn't healthy. What scares me is the way that this kind of thing seems to becoming a sort of societal neurosis. People talk about being afraid in public places and scanning crowds always looking for signs of danger as if these are rational actions. 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.

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.

I don't bother making sure the pilot has done the appropriate safety checks or the mechanics haven't done their jobs because there are enough structures in place to make sure they have. So, plane safety is a task I have cheerfully delegated, with full faith.

[Caracal]

Mass shootings are exceedingly rare, to the point of being negligible risk.

So are plane crashes, but that doesn't mean we don't find ways to thoughtfully prevent them.

Right, and those systems mean that when people fly on planes they don't think they should be in charge of assessing and managing dangers and risks. That's good, because we don't have the information or the knowledge to accurately assess those risks and trying to do so would just induce anxiety. The system isn't perfect, planes do occasionally crash and sometimes these crashes involve failures of oversight, but the system is designed to figure out what went wrong and prevent similar things from happening again, even though crashes are quite rare.

Mass shootings are also rare, and the individual risk is quite low, but our political system has completely failed to address them (Or gun violence in general which kills far more people than the mass shootings that get so much attention) The result is that some people try to mitigate and manage their own risk. That's understandable, but it isn't effective and it certainly isn't healthy. What scares me is the way that this kind of thing seems to becoming a sort of societal neurosis. People talk about being afraid in public places and scanning crowds always looking for signs of danger as if these are rational actions. 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.

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.

It's the same two issues. First of all, these things are too rare to make hyper vigilance a rational strategy. It can be reasonable to take some precautions against rare events-Lighting striking people is pretty uncommon, but I don't stand around in open fields or under large trees, as thunderstorms move in. However, those precautions need to be well calibrated to the risk or it quickly becomes neurotic and obsessive. Scanning crowds for guns is not like checking the weather before you go for a walk, it's more like spending the entire walk starting at your radar to make sure no thunderstorm pops up.

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. I'm not accusing the OP of being obsessive, I'd be nervous about this student too, but there are just limitations to what individuals can do.

[Hegemony]

I'm guessing Caracal is male. For women, we know that we take male violence into account every day. And that to do so is prudent, not obsessive. Is it too dark to walk down to the corner store? Should I park in this far-away parking lot or will I be returning to my car so late that I won't be safe walking in this deserted space after dark? How late is it safe to stay in this building finishing my work, when most other people will be gone? And yes, that unbalanced misogynist guy in the class who talks about violence — what should I do about him? He's part of a bigger picture and women are familiar with that bigger picture, and with taking these things into account in all our moves. It's like being on the highway — it's not obsessive to think "That truck is coming really fast, I'd better wait till it goes by before trying to pass," "It's getting rainy, better slow down," "That guy trying to merge looks a bit reckless, better slow down and steer clear of him." The possibility of male violence is one of those everyday things we take account of, just like bad drivers and slippery roads.

[fizzycist]

I'm guessing Caracal is male. For women, we know that we take male violence into account every day.

If we're doing stereotypes, it's also possible a lot of the security hawks in this thread are white. Some of the rest of us are wary about calling the cops and trying to get ppl expelled because of vague fears.

And for the record, before things turn nasty here, I can totally relate to trying to avoid having an annoying student in my class and do not blame OP for trying. I just push back on the tendency in this thread to assume the harshest responses are the good, just thing to do.

[kaysixteen]

A few more things:

1) this student could well be on the spectrum, something the professor will never be told unless a) kid says it himself, or b) he requests and gets disabilities accommodations. 

2) Things really have changed since the 80s.   In 1987, during my sophomore year of college, I got kicked out of a class by a professor who overreacted to something I did, assuming it was a potential threat.   It appalled me at the time.... but looking backl on the incident, although I threatened no violence, used no bad language, etc., it remains clear to me in hindsight that she probably legitimately felt threatened.   And it certainly would have gone badly for me had I done this in 2023.  Again, there was no violence, no threat of violence-- really I overreacted to what I, a stupid 19yo conservative Christian kid, felt was people ganging up on me in a seminar dominated by people who did not think like me, and I assumed a persecution complex.   I shudder to think of what might have happened to me had 2023 standards been in effect.

[Caracal]

I'm guessing Caracal is male. For women, we know that we take male violence into account every day. And that to do so is prudent, not obsessive. Is it too dark to walk down to the corner store? Should I park in this far-away parking lot or will I be returning to my car so late that I won't be safe walking in this deserted space after dark? How late is it safe to stay in this building finishing my work, when most other people will be gone? And yes, that unbalanced misogynist guy in the class who talks about violence — what should I do about him? He's part of a bigger picture and women are familiar with that bigger picture, and with taking these things into account in all our moves. It's like being on the highway — it's not obsessive to think "That truck is coming really fast, I'd better wait till it goes by before trying to pass," "It's getting rainy, better slow down," "That guy trying to merge looks a bit reckless, better slow down and steer clear of him." The possibility of male violence is one of those everyday things we take account of, just like bad drivers and slippery roads.

That's fair and again, I really I wasn't accusing the original poster of overreacting or being scared of nothing. I was talking about the broader fear of mass shootings in response to other comments. 

[Caracal]

A few more things:

1) this student could well be on the spectrum, something the professor will never be told unless a) kid says it himself, or b) he requests and gets disabilities accommodations. 

This is a good point. There's a lot of "therapeutic common sense" that many of use to discuss mental health. That's fine, but it can lead to misdiagnosis in the same way that if you look up your physical symptoms, you can easily conclude that your sore throat is probably cancer.

People who have violent or disturbing thoughts, for example, are more likely to be dealing with a form of OCD than they are to be psychotic. My impression is that it's usually quite easy for a professional to distinguish between these things. It's completely possible that this student isn't delusional at all, but there's something else going on that's causing him to say disturbing things. Or not.

Again, this is why I think the only real path forward is to focus on the behavior, rather than the risk. If a student is saying things in class that scare you and scare other students, that's untenable, regardless of the cause.

[kaysixteen]

Another thing... I get that if any student makes objectively threatening comments in class, or takes objectively threatening actions there, he should be dismissed from the class.   But the key word here is 'objectively'-- IOW, there must be an objective basis for determining that the kid's words or actions were indeed threatening, and an adolescent young woman's feelings, or even the feelings of a middle aged professor, cannot substitute for such objective evidence... I simply have to come back to the reality that, in this case, said kid was vetted by cops, campus security, and campus mental health, and found not to be a threat.

[Hegemony]

I can well imagine someone saying things that they are found not to mean, but that would be objectionable anyway. If a class is talking about the causes of poverty, and one guy keeps saying, "It's the feminazis raising sissy boys, they should all be shot, like you should all be shot. You, Emily, and you, Jenna, and you, Professor Janeway -- a bullet through each heart" — the cops may find he has no intention of actually shooting anyone, but this is not the kind of language fellow students or a professor should have to put up with. Actually taking violent action is not the only way that an unbalanced person can be disturbing.

[kaysixteen]

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.

[apl68]

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.

One would certainly like to think so, and yet very often in murder investigations it turns out that prior terroristic threats had not been dealt with by the relevant authorities.  There are several kinds of cracks that this sort of thing can fall through.

[spork]

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.