We know exactly what evil looks like. That’s what we’re thinking now, isn’t it? All those red flags. Why didn’t someone stop that evil?
How easy it is, with everything revealed since Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui executed his massacre, to say what should have happened.
According to news reports, the guy wrote a violent play. A roommate and classmates said he didn’t speak or even make eye contact.
Poet Nikki Giovanni booted him from her writing class after female students accused him of photographing their legs. Two women were so bothered by him that they contacted police, but didn’t press charges. Court papers show he underwent an evaluation at a psychiatric hospital.
Lots of people knew a lot about Cho. This wasn’t just another young guy with a “Kill Bill” bent for pop-culture violence. Wasn’t Cho so bizarre and so antisocial that someone should have recognized a killer in the making?
What might seem easy, with our 20/20 hindsight and the cruel images Cho sent to NBC News, isn’t easy, not in practice.
At the University of Washington Counseling Center, Maurice Warner has seen hundreds of troubled young people. He’s seen issues ranging from academic worries to suicide.
“For every instance like Virginia Tech, there are hundreds of thousands of incidents that don’t turn out that way. It’s very difficult to know which is which,” said Warner, associate director of the counseling center.
“There isn’t any magic key to know that this person is a real threat and that person is not. Every instance is a judgment call,” he said.
Even extreme isolation doesn’t mean someone is a risk to others or themselves, Warner said. “When someone is in significant distress, withdrawal is often the way they cope with the world,” he said. “The great majority of students in distress do not have a mental illness.”
Warner said it’s common at a big university for someone to express concern about a student’s mental health. It might be an adviser, roommate or professor. “A counselor would not approach the student. If counseling is appropriate, the faculty member might walk the student over,” he said.
Unless the behavior “is really egregious,” counselors can’t make students use their services. “Unless someone has committed a crime, their civil liberties are still in place,” Warner said.
For about three years, the UW has used a controversial suicide prevention program modeled after one at the University of Illinois. “In 20 years, the suicide rate on that campus has been halved,” Warner said.
If it comes to light that a UW student has attempted suicide or “expresses a serious intent to harm themselves,” an evaluation is done. If the behavior meets certain criteria, “it’s a conduct violation,” Warner said.
Students get the choice of avoiding the university’s normal conduct process by undergoing four psychological assessment sessions. “It’s a way of requiring somebody to make contact. Otherwise, they’re not inclined to,” Warner said.
About 20 to 30 students per year go through it. Typically, Warner said, a student will say, “I would not have chosen to do this, but I’m glad you made me.”
He’s struck by “how hair-thin the line is” between someone who’s troubled and someone “who feels at their wits’ end and takes some drastic action to not feel the pain.”
Help is available. It’s not required.
Warner sees the notion that someone could have prevented the Virginia bloodbath as a way for us to quell our fears.
“The world really is more random than I would like it to be,” he said. “The scariest state for most of us is the realization of powerlessness.”
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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