A professor at San Jose State University no longer conducts his writing class because he said a student's story that fictionalized the killing of a professor, "had created an atmosphere of conflict in the classroom which would make learning difficult."

Mitch Berman, the professor for Writing Fiction, an English course at SJSU, said in an e-mail that the story, which was written before the Virginia Tech University shooting, had "created a great deal of anxiety," and several of his students wrote to him after the shooting, questioning "their own safety in the classroom."

Berman added that "the incident at Virginia Tech has underscored the need to err on the side of caution, and I believe the university well understands that incidents such as the one that happened in this class now need to be taken more seriously."

The story, which was written by a student in the class, is a 17-page fictional narrative about an English student who convinces a vampire lover to kill the student's "unethical, wicked" professor.

Berman said in the e-mail that he asked the class to be moved online if a substitute teacher could not be hired, but students in the class urged the department administration to appoint a substitute teacher after only a few online classes were held. The department obliged, and a substitute lecturer is handling the remaining classes.

The chair of the English department, Scott Rice, as well as the student who wrote the story declined to provide any detail regarding this situation.

Gyasi Woods, a senior majoring in advertising, said she is a student in Berman's class, and that certain quotes from the story match what Berman had said to the student during a classroom critique of one of the student's stories submitted earlier in the semester.

Although the fictional story never references Berman by name, one of the fictional professor's quotes reads, "You don't know jack-s--t about movies if you don't know Kurosawa."

Another student in the class, who wished to remain unidentified, said the fictionalized professor's quote in the story is nearly verbatim to what Berman said to the student during the critique. The student also said other quotes in the story were nearly identical to things Berman said in the classroom.

"He's blunt, so I guess this (student) in our class took it harshly," Woods said.

She said she didn't think the student was a danger to the class or the professor.

"I think (the student) was angry at the teacher," she said. "(The student) used the story to say something."

The fictional story contains details regarding the unusual manner in which a vampire takes its victims' lives. The student wrote, "Immediate death comes to the creatures or humans whose recent feces were consumed by these vampires."

The story ends when the vampire reveals, "I killed him," referring to the fictionalized English professor.

Gyasi said she and the student were still attending the class.

"(The student) is a regular kid. (The student) sits in the front," she said. " … If I felt a danger, then I wouldn't come to class."

Adam Goldstein, attorney advocate for the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va., said the First Amendment protects the student's writing of the story as long as the professor did not have a reasonable fear for the safety of his life.

"There is no real connection between writing violence, even first-person violence, and committing acts of violence," Goldstein said.

Berman said in an e-mail that in his 10 years of teaching, many of his students had written "gory" stories or have satirized or "lampooned (him) in a witty way."

However, he wrote, "… I've never been handed a story that created a character recognizably based on me, and seen any harm come to that character. The story in question was therefore the most inappropriate story ever submitted to any of my classes."

Berman said in a telephone interview that he cancelled the class in which the student's story, along with other students' stories, were to be discussed. He said he sent an e-mail to his entire class and posted a note on the classroom door notifying cancellation of the day's class.

Two students, who wished to remain unidentified, and Woods said they felt Berman failed to effectively communicate his cancellation of any classes or his plans regarding the movement of the class online or to be taught by a substitute.

Berman said that some classes following the story were previously cancelled as mentioned on the course syllabus.

The students said Berman never disclosed the circumstances regarding the immediate cancellation of any classes or the circumstances leading to his absence from his classroom.

"We'd sit in class and nobody knew why class was cancelled," said one anonymous student. "Everybody assumed it was because of the student's story."

The student said the writer of the story apologized to the class for the trouble the story had caused, adding that the writer of the story regretted writing it at all.