VA shooting

My mom called me this evening to see if I was alright. Neither of us know anyone at VA Tech, what she was calling about was to see if I was scared of my students. If I had anyone in my classes who I thought might be violent/crazy/suicidal. Was I at risk to be shot by a student or fellow grad?

At first, I sort of blew off the question. Of course I'm not at risk. I go to Santa Cruz! Bannan slugs... hippies... we're a pretty chill group. We're dedicated to building a safe community and we try to tackle issues of on campus violence and sexual assault. I may be offered a 40 oz by a student* or if I'll make it out to the Porter meadow on Friday afternoon, but I can possibly imagine a student shooting me or my class.

There were warning signs, I told her. His profs were cued to disturbing behavior and he had been sent for mental health treatment.

"So what would you do if you had a student who raised red flags for you? How would you protect yourself? What if it was a fellow graduate student?"

And I was stumped. Being afraid of my students is not the answer (nor anything I feel). I certainly haven't seen any work produced for me or attitude problems in my cass that would raise alarm bells. Although my cell phones must be off rule seems more justified now. I encourage my students to talk to me when they are overwhelmed, to let me know I will work with them. I check in with the ones I know, and the ones I don't know as well but look a little like death warmed over - either physically or mentally.

But the question still remains: what do I do if I have a student who has sent signs that they may do harm to themselves of others? What is the procedure? Do I talk to the student first? The supervising professor? How do I follow up on how the admin might be dealing with the situation? What do you do when you know someone who desperately needs help but there's nothing that it seems you can do to help them get it?

How do we deal with suicidal undergrads? How do we deal with suicidal grads?

College is a stressful time. In addition to the pressures of school, being away from home, or being at home, life, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, the early 20s are a time when certain mental problems emerge. I had an acquaintence who attended the Engineering school north of my campus who had a mental breakdown while in college. He walked into someone's home, sat down at their kitchen table and simply refused to leave. He was checked into a hospital for in-patient care for an extended epriod of time, and, frankly, that was just the episode we knew about.

There's been a lot of talk on campus about the mental well-being of the student body and concers regarding the psychological health of the campus. Much of this was in wake of our chancellor's suicide, but I can only image the cries will get stronger after this week's shooting.

I guess what I want to know is what are we going to do about it? What should we do? and What can we do?


*this actually happened to me last quarter.