Should there be a legal duty on teachers and school counselors to report information such as this to police?

Question

"The gunman suspected of carrying out the Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 people dead was identified Tuesday as a English major whose creative writing was so disturbing that he was referred to the school's counseling service."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070417/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_shooting

Answer 1

There is at the high school level, but the University level is a very different place. Having taught at the high school level and am now currently running a dorm at a large university very similiar to the VT one, it is a completely different deal. The students are above age and protected by a lot of privacy laws. Beyond that, the process is much more decentralized and there are no school counselors on a campus, but rather counseling centers wherein the students are protected by HIPAA.

Answer 2

I read the plays, and they certainly are violent. But I'm cautious not to take these two plays out of context; I mean, we're not told if Cho wrote 40 plays, and all the other 38 were about prancing unicorns and sunny summer days. It's easy for us to look at two isolated scripts, and say "oh, everyone should have known".

The problem with creative writing is that it's supposed to be creative, and, in disciplines such as English writing and drama, we must make a distinction between art and life. A lot of the time, teachers push students to explore their creative boundaries, and to even explore taboo or controversial material.

I mean, look at William Shakespeare. If you want to read King Lear, it has really terrible violence - eyes being ripped out of live skulls, and nasty, nasty deaths. In King John, there is another scene where a prisoner's eyes are to be put out with hot pokers. And Romeo and Juliet, a high-school staple, features teen suicide. A lot of other drama and writing has equally - and even more graphic - violence.

But we study this stuff openly in English classes everywhere - it's even considered fine literature. And then, when you compare the violence in literature and the violence imagined by screen writers, directors and producers for many of Hollywood's most celebrated movies and films, Cho's writing really pales into insignificance. I mean, look at "Silence of the Lambs," or any one of the three films in the "Saw" trilogy, which features people's ribcages being ripped open while they're still alive, and people being forced to put their own hands into acid. That's way nastier than Cho's writings, but it made the film producers multi millions.

Because of the graphic nature of a lot of material in English, Drama, and Arts - and because we don't know if Cho wrote other plays that weren't of this orientation, I think it's difficult to condemn his teachers for not "recognising" the "warning signs".

Otherwise, we should probably lock up a great many of the world's best writers and artists in the name of safety and security. And we should probably shut down Hollywood while we're at it.... minds that twisted should be referred to counselling, right?

Answer 3

Yes, but how? I think schools are doing such reporting, but colleges and universities are not.
Seems like MIT set up some kind of program like 5 or so years ago when an Asian girl committed suicide. MIT was going to set up a program to help kids who were depressed and also under severe pressure to get perfect grades, etc. This issue you describe should be the number one issue for schools across the country. Gun control is not the real issue that many are spouting.

Answer 4

There pretty much already is. For instance teachers have to report if someone reports abuse, writes suicidal notes, or threats against others. Most people that work in schools are "mandated reporterers".

My friends son told a counselor he wanted to kill himself a few months after his father died of cancer and he was pulled out of school and into a treatment - suicide prevention program right away.

I think this university should have handled the lock down better after the first shootings and they could have saved lives.
Just my opinion.

Above person who stated differences between high school andd college is correct though - I work with middle and high school so it is very different.

Answer 5

One would think so. A certain degree of that kind of writing may be okay but when it is really bad and he was sent for counseling twice bells should have sounded in someone's mind that signaled a serious problem and take action.

Maybe this is a wake up call, the old kick in the pants people need once in awhile to be alert and aware of what is happening.

Answer 6

When I was in college, I was informed I was on a list of potential wackos, because of my Marine background, course choices - Genocide, War and VIolence, Violence in America and so on. A lot of my papers dealt with violent subject matter, and when I was informed I was on the list, I just asked to make sure I was number one on that list.

I tried to get my campus up in arms over a new policy to turn in all of our assignments to www.turnitin.com, supposedly to thwart plagiarism and cheating. I did very limited research and found out that the FBI had indirect links to that site.

So, guess what? That means every paper I wrote in college was forwarded to the FBI. I am writing a comic with a friend of mine, a South Korean resident alien, who has lived here since he was 7 years old. Our comic is, violent, what a surprise.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that, they already ARE monitoring our stuff. But, as in my case, where do you draw the line? Yes, I took War and Violence, but only because as a former Marine, I wanted to understand more about the subject and what civilians thought about it.

I took Genocide because of my German background, and feeling always tugged at whenever there was talk about the Holocaust - I wanted to find out just how these things could happen, and still are happening - we focused on Rwanda in that class.

I took Violence in America because, well, just look at yesterday, one of the things we were trying to find out is why America, the USA, is so violent, compared to Canada, Europe, etc. We never reached any solid conclusions, imho.

Anyway, to summarize, where do you draw the line? What becomes "too violent" - the Bible is rife with violence, should we profile the author/s of it?

Answer 7

I WONDER!! But you have to remember that the Professors at such institutions of higher learning ar dealing with supposed responsible adults and so they're geared to a different way of thinking.
There are two sides to your coin::: On one side your suggestion makes perfect sense to me...like national security, and Counselors are even allowed to record and video tape certain interviews with consent, so students would probably have to consent as well.
The other side, of course is the "politically-correct" paranoia that exists over the invasion of rights and personal freedoms. It's a pretty interesting dilemma.
I'll be "monitoring" the answers to the question, so thanks for asking (by the way, I didn't know his writings were so disturbing, so thanks again.)

Answer 8

No, because what a person writes in class for assignments is doing so under their freedom of speech right. The teacher can pursue any questions they have by asking and confronting the student, but it is not constitutionally appropriate to label a person and refer them simply because they have a tendency to write of disturbing things. If that was the case Stephen King, Wes Craven, and a number of other people would definitely need to be under constant surveillance. I've even written a fairly dark piece for class myself before. It wasn't representative of any literal desire I was carrying, but it was the culmination of the way I viewed the goals of the assingment.
A teachers goal is to nourish and educate, not dissect and diagnose. They do not have the training to read in between the lines of things such as that.

Answer 9

One would think so. After all, mental health professionals who suspect that a client may do harm to another are legally obligated to inform the potential victims.

Answer 10

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