TheGibsonReport.today.com

It’s hard to wrap your mind around the insane violence inflicted on dozens of innocent people on the Virginia Tech campus this week. Having experienced a gunman aiming a gun at a room full of people in Boston when I was a TV news anchor, I know what panic and fear feel and taste like. My heart goes out to families and friends coping with such an intimate tragedy. I also feel a bit of rage and frustration with academic settings that often allow madness to fester. It’s rather frightening to be intimidated by students who make veiled threats when they don’t like the grades they’ve earned. It’s equally unsettling to identify students with obvious mental health problems on a college campus and find institutional practices that prevent taking action. I once had a male student disrupt a class of 75 with his threatening behavior. Fearing for the safety of myself and others, I went through the chain of command letting administrators know about the student. I was told there was nothing that could be done. That of course wasn’t true. Citing the law, the professionals refused to do more; they fell back on 20th century practices rather than thinking outside of the box and creating new ways to handle old problems. At a time when depression and suicides continue to plague college campuses… more innovative approaches must be developed in university settings.

My situation with an obviously troubled student was resolved a month later when he was arrested for having drugs and stealing from others. Contrary to what an editorial in The Washington Post reported on 4-19-07, there are things that can be done on any campus when mental health questions are raised. The problem is that the letter of the law is being followed, but not its spirit.

So we need to treat Seung Hui Cho’s [sung hee JOH] damaging behavior as a wake-up call; we need to ask urgent questions AND we need to be kinder and gentler to each other. What, for example, caused so many teachers during his entire education to just pass him along? How did he get into Virginia Tech with such anti-social skills; how did he get to be a senior? Why isn’t there a clearing house on any campus for team assessments of individuals who pose possible threats to the quality of life of a university community?

The shooter has been repeatedly described as a “loner, anti-social, weird.” What a shame that young college students in his living situation were forced to endure the shooter’s alienating behavior. They were the only individuals to actually seek professional help for a disturbed student. That happened because Virginia Tech, like most universities, didn’t have an adequate mental health safety net. Finally, since the shooter’s Great Aunt in Korea has told the world that Cho was a “cold” child before he was even eight years old, it’s difficult to understand how professionals over a 16 year period didn’t make referrals for mental health care.

As a social psychologist, I have found enough information in the literature that indicates when individuals are “loosely coupled,” they tend to be loners, isolated, withdrawn, and typically angry. Certainly you don’t need a college degree or any kind of professional certification to know that a poor ability to relate to others is a key indicator that something is wrong.

When Cho’s roommates observed that he never went home over breaks, they became concerned enough to call the police. While these students should be applauded for trying to help, they should not have had to endure being around someone who demonstrated a total disregard for other human beings.

Seeing the shooter’s total disconnect with reality in his video, we are forced to wonder how many others like him are roaming our streets, campuses, workplaces, and even, our temples, mosques, and churches.

The Virginia Tech massacre is a serious wake-up call for every state that has cut its mental health budgets and closed its mental health institutions. Shame! We have enough money to fund a billion dollar war but not enough to help our citizens who are in pain? Shame! We have only to look to our prisons and jails to see where so many of the mentally ill and homeless individuals have landed. We need to face the fact that homelessness is a socially constructed phenonmenon. Can we not see, now, what a student killer has shown his family and the nation: the United States of America is in the midst of a serious mental health crisis?

Now is the time to insist that Colleges and Universities stop shutting out parents by insisting that students are their sole customers. Now is the time to stop overloading young college students with massive debt and stop pretending that their parents just want to “hover” when they ask questions about their children. These institutions have created a serious debt problem at the same time that they have made lots of money for loan agencies and debt collectors. The intitutional wagons were circled when Virginia Tech’s president supported his security system before the facts were even investigated. In the end it will be the parents and love ones of the students who will bring about change…