Last December, a SUNY Binghamton professor was stabbed to death by a paranoid graduate student. The student was well known to police and fellow students for his threatening and crazy behavior, but was still a student at Binghamton.
Yesterday, a graduate student at the University of Florida famous for his big-lecture geography class about which one student, echoing other comments, writes “Impossible NOT to get an A,” was shot by police. It’s not clear what condition he’s in.
For a year, at least one professor and one counselor at the university had known that the student was seriously unstable:
Police first met with Adu-Brempong on Monday to check on him after a report of possible emotional problems.
Geography professor Peter Waylen had contacted police to say Adu-Brempong had sent an e-mail with troubling statements, which were redacted in the police report. Waylen told police Adu-Brempong had been having delusional thoughts for at least a year and that he previously had received help from a UF counselor because he believed the U.S. government was not going to renew his student visa, the report stated.
… Waylen and an officer spoke Monday with Adu-Brempong at his apartment.
“I asked Adu-Brempong if he had any concerns that I could help with. Adu-Brempong advised that he was fine and did not need anyone’s help,” Officer Gene Rogers wrote in the report. “I advised him that Waylen and I were concerned for his safety and were there to assist him any way we could.”
The report states Adu-Brempong refused help from a counselor and stated several times that he was fine.
Last night a neighbor called police because Adu-Brempong was screaming inside of his apartment. Details on what caused him to be shot are unclear at this point. Police say he threatened them with a knife and a pipe.
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UD thanks a reader for sending her the Florida story.
March 5th, 2010 at 9:20AM
Margaret, these posts on campus shootings, while useful, seem at odds with your critiques of psychiatry, which you seem to suggest is not a science. Please clarify.
March 5th, 2010 at 10:23AM
[…] | via Gainesville.com. I’m very disturbed by this case, but not for the same reason as University Diaries, who includes this with other cases of “delusional” students. Here are the facts of […]
March 5th, 2010 at 11:29AM
Hi KC (hope it’s okay for me to shorten your name) – Psychiatry is, as I said in our earlier exchange, a modest science, limited in its descriptive and curative powers. This is not to say that it cannot adequately identify, describe, and sometimes treat paranoid and delusional behavior. Often it can. Often a psychiatrist can put a schizophrenic on medication that will help the schizophrenic be less psychotic. What we were debating earlier was the extent of psychiatry’s empirical reach. That’s why, for instance, I cited the use of the word “psychosprawl” in a commenter’s remarks on the Edward Shorter piece.
March 5th, 2010 at 12:48PM
Yes, that’s fine and thanks for clarifying.