Thirty-two college students

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11610323.post-85114825148187256872007-04-18T09:46:00.000-04:002007-04-18T13:17:44.864-04:00Thirty-two college studentsI'm growing <a href="http://breadandwine.blogspot.com/2006/10/making-world-safe-for-kids.html" target="_blank">weary</a> of documenting the slaughter of our children and young adults. Until now, though, most of the deadliest school shootings have been committed by people who were able to articulate rational complaints, however misguided. <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2099203/" target="_blank">Harris and Klebold</a> knew what they were doing, and did it to redress perceived wrongs and injustices. There was a whole <a href="http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/weird/kids1/index_1.html" target="_blank">string</a> of school shootings in the late 1990s -- almost all of them committed by kids who knew what they were doing, were able to state why, and at times even sent out warning signs. If you want to go back even further, there was <a href="http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~daniel_sc/assignment1/1989lecole.html" target="_blank">Marc Lepine,</a> the Canadian psychopath enraged at women who were admitted to engineering school. Their crime was having the guts to step out of the barefoot-pregnant-in-the-kitchen role and dare to try making careers for themselves. However, by now it appears that the <a href="http://www.cavalierdaily.com/CVArticle.asp?ID=30192&pid=1583" target="_blank">Virginia Tech shooter</a> had schizophrenia. His targets were chosen 100% at random, and he never articulated any clear complaints against anyone. This may make it more difficult to give the tragedy some meaning: the Canadian engineering students, for example, were symbols of women's progress; the Columbine tragedy started a whole debate about the effects of bullying in high schools. The deaths were horrific and shocking, but led people to ask tough questions about what changes could be made to make our schools safer, and about our responsibility, as adults, to all children and young adults. Cho Seung-Hui had a history of <a href="http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070418/NEWS07/70418029" target="_blank">psychiatric problems.</a> He was 23 years old, around the age when people with schizophrenia first begin to get symptoms. His creative writing teacher expressed concern over a <a href="http://www.dailymail.com/story/Entertainment/2007041851/Gunmans-writings-was-like-something-out-of-a-nightmare/" target="_blank">play</a> he wrote. He was apparently hospitalized in 2005, and it's unclear whether he ever followed up with treatment after his discharge (probably not). We can't really blame the perpetrator for a mental illness that shredded his perception and judgment just as thoroughly as cancer rips apart the immune system. Of course all the gun nuts will say that this would never have happened if everyone in the school was armed to the teeth, and the gun control nuts will argue that we need to make guns much harder to get. <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0704170679apr18,1,7727444.column?coll=chi-news-col" target="_blank">Charles M. Madigan,</a> in my opinion, gets the balance exactly right. Without greater attention to mental health issues, it's hard to see what could possibly be done to prevent this sort of tragedy in the future. An increased awareness of <a href="http://www.claudesteiner.com/emlit.htm" target="_blank">emotional literacy</a> in the classroom, and maybe training educators on how to detect psychosis would probably help a lot. We can't make every writing teacher or computer science professor a mental health clinician, of course. But the symptoms of psychosis are not that difficult to detect, and by now it's clear that our shooter's social isolation and preoccupation with violence sent up red flags to anyone around him who cared to look. It should not have taken a shooting rampage to get people to pay attention to someone who was holding his own academically but who clearly needed help in just about every other area of his life. Our hearts go out to the victims' families in this horrible disaster. <a href="http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html" target="_blank">A timeline of recent worldwide school shootings</a>BreadBreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02684977319272564308noreply@blogger.com