Shooting at Va. Tech

So are you Japanese or Chinese? /Hank Hill, King of the Hill

 

I think we're pushing it here. So, the kid was picked on in middle school and high school.

Like that hasn't happened to millions of other kids.

Who didn't turn out to be mass murderers.

 

LAWS LIMIT OPTIONS WHEN A STUDENT IS MENTALLY ILL

Federal privacy and antidiscrimination laws restrict how universities can deal with students who have mental health problems.



For the most part, universities cannot tell parents about their children’s problems without the student’s consent. They cannot release any information in a student’s medical record without consent. And they cannot put students on involuntary medical leave, just because they develop a serious mental illness.



Nor is knowing when to worry about student behavior, and what action to take, always so clear.



“They can’t really kick someone out because they’re writing papers about weird topics, even if they seem withdrawn and hostile,” said Dr. Richard Kadison, chief of mental health services at Harvard University. “Most state laws are pretty clear: you can only bring students to hospitals if there is imminent risk to themselves or someone else, so universities are in a bit of a bind that way.”



But, he said, some schools do mandate limited amounts of treatment in certain circumstances.



“At the University of Missouri, if someone makes a suicide attempt, they mandate four counseling sessions, for example,” said Dr. Kadison, an author of “College of the Overwhelmed: The Campus Mental Health Crisis and What To Do About It.”



Universities can find themselves in a double bind. On the one hand, they may be liable if they fail to prevent a suicide or murder. After the death in 2000 of Elizabeth H. Shin, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who had written several suicide notes and used the university counseling service before setting herself on fire, the

Massachusetts Superior Court allowed her parents, who had not been told of her deterioration, to sue administrators for $27.7 million. The case was settled for an undisclosed amount.



On the other hand, universities may be held liable if they do take action to remove a potentially suicidal student. In August, the City University of New York agreed to pay $65,000 to a student who sued after being barred from her dormitory room at Hunter College because she was hospitalized after a suicide attempt.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/us/19protocol.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=us&pagewanted=print

 

That's all very true. I remember like it was yesterday reading about Charles Manson and David Koresh using the Web to get the word out. Jim Jones, too.

 

Dude... blue type... please.

 

If not for the Internet, how would Dateline catch all those pedophiles? Works both ways.

 

Actually, he bought both of his guns in stores -- one in a pawn shop, and one in a gun shop. He also bought the ammunition at a number of local stores, including Wal-Mart.

It might not be "just in," but it's the best kind of news: accurate, that is.

Please read the linked Washington Post story for a little thing we like to call proof.

 

The one part that really hit home for me was when Trey Perkins thought of how his mother would react to the news. Because I know that is exactly what I would be thinking and reading that inevitably made me think of how my mother would have reacted if she found out I had been executed like that....and it about broke me up.

Everything about that story was superb, from headline to attribution.

 

I agree. The two or three times I thought I was a goner, that's exactly what I thought.

 

Yes.

 

I just want to admit that my earlier post might have been a little off the mark. I proposed that something notable happened to Cho just before he purchased the guns. Now I'm not sure that's the case. Perhaps there was something that put him over the edge, but he clearly had anger and hatred festering in him for a long time.

Cho reminds me a lot of a kid who killed a girl at Eastern Illinois University a few years ago. I don't recall all of the details, but he had started a fire some time before he broke into the girl's house and raped and killed her. He had been something of a stalker and a strange bird. I sort of got the notion that he killed the girl because she resisted his affection.

If a guy like Cho had found a legitimate girlfriend, perhaps he would have become a different person. The problem, obviously, is that he was such an asshole and such a bizarre individual that he closed himself off from that possibility. It's easy to become cynical, and it's volatile when you're talking about an individual with mental issues. But I wish someone could get these people to understand that the whole world isn't against them.

 

I'm obsessed with this friggin' story, and it really bothers me.