Safety and College Kids, Again

It was hideous that just a few hours after I wrote my last entry, a young man went and killed a number of other students and faculty before committing suicide. We work so hard to protect and educate our kids, but in the end, what can we do to keep them safe?

You can try to prevent people from getting their hands on weapons and ammo designed to kill hundreds in minutes. You can also keep an eye out for individuals who are in trouble and need help.

I had a student once at UCR who was really struggling. I had him come to my office hours to go over a paper literally sentence by sentence. In class, he always seemed like a dull giant, unaware of what was going on, not a part of any group. In my office, he was downright strange. Luckily, I had a new puppy with me that we'd just gotten (it was late in the afternoon, and the few people about didn't seem bothered by her), and I held to her for dear life. He seemed nearly unaware of her (what college kid wouldn't react to the sight of a new puppy?) He didn't seem able to grasp anything that I was telling him, only repeating back to me some of my points without being able to arrive at any conclusion. I'd never seen anything like it. My students with ADD had at least been socially able, but the lack of short-term memory was the only clue I had to go on with him. Finally, I asked him if he'd ever had any kind of testing for learning disability, and he was rather vague. After an hour, I told him that I needed to go, and he left. That evening, I made a point of calling some other faculty members I knew from the department, and they said that they'd had him in class in the past, and he'd been ok, not very bright, but hardly impaired. The next morning, I called the Disabled Student office to ask about testing, and when I said the student's name, they immediately recognized him as a schizophrenic that they'd seen before. From what I told them, they surmised that he'd gone off his medication. They contacted him soon after that and worked on getting him hospitalized. At that point, I wouldn't say that he was a danger to anyone, but he was only functioning superficially, and it was a matter of time before even that would have fallen away. He was lucky--he'd already been identified, treated, and was in the system, so my one phone call was enough to start a process going. How many other people saw him during that time and chose to avoid him because he was too weird? How many would have preferred to fail him (or worse, pass him) without trying to find an appropriate student service for him?

You can also protect your children by teaching them to be aware of others and their suffering. It would be more helpful to have your kids learn something about psychology in order to help or get help for others before they lash out. By the time they're armed, it's too late. And do we want to live in a world where we all have to wear body armor? I'd prefer the protection of knowledge and compassion. Isn't that what a university education is for?