The Los Angeles Times reports:
A UCLA professor who taught the student accused of slashing a female classmate’s throat last week said Saturday that he told a university administrator 10 months ago that he had concerns about the student’s mental health, but strict federal privacy laws prevent UCLA officials from disclosing how they handled the issue.
Stephen Frank, an associate professor in the university’s history department, met the suspect, undergraduate student Damon Thompson, when he enrolled in the instructor’s Western civilization class late last year, Frank said in an interview.
Frank said he grew concerned about Thompson in mid-December 2008, after the student sent several e-mails complaining that classmates sitting around him had been disruptive and made offensive comments to him while he was taking a written exam.
In one of the e-mails that Frank provided to The Times, Thompson, 20, also accused Frank of taunting him.
“I believe I heard you, Professor Frank, say that I was ‘troubled’ and ‘crazy’ among other things,” Thompson wrote in the e-mail. “My outrage at this situation coupled with the pressure of the very weighted examination dulled my concentration and detracted from my performance.”
There were other such complaints from the student about a range of campus people. He seems, from the article’s descriptions, to be a severe paranoid.
An official told Frank that they could only suggest to Thompson that he seek treatment, but they could not require him to seek psychological services.
“My concern was in the context of other violent incidents on campuses around the country,” Frank said…
It can’t be true that merely suggesting help was UCLA’s only option. Surely it can suspend students who seem threateningly unstable.
[A spokeswoman] noted that campus police have said they have no record of any formal complaints being made about Thompson prior to his arrest.
What are we calling a formal complaint? A faculty member had sent the university plenty of evidence that the student was seriously unbalanced.
Another thing. UD‘s followed enough of these stories to know that getting anything useful out of the student’s family is unlikely. For whatever reason (denial?), in a number of cases, when family members comment to the press, they express amazement that an obviously troubled brother or son or cousin had anything wrong with him. If even Susan Klebold can claim she hadn’t a clue…
Which leads UD to suggest that universities looking to avoid trouble should pay serious attention to what professors and teaching assistants tell them.
October 11th, 2009 at 7:12AM
We have all been left with little recourse when faced with a troubled student. The faculty should have to authority to require evaluation of such students (and colleagues, for the matter of that). There are plenty of procedures for students to file a grievance against their teacher. Why not the reverse?
October 11th, 2009 at 7:40AM
But, if the faculty member or other "campus people" have not done anything more than "tell someone", there really is little that can be done. The individuals involved do have to make a formal complaint through the police or student life to make things happen.
A faculty member or student goes to the department head (who could be the "university administrator"). The department head might visit the class, speak with others involved and/or meet with the student in question. Unless something actionable happens in one of those situations, the best the head can do is advise the faculty member and other students to file a report (if something has already happened) or monitor the situation and file a report when something does.
The faculty member, administrator, students, and other campus people involved need to be willing to pick up the phone and/or fill out the form and/or visit the student life office and make the complaint official. We all have student codes of conduct that prohibit disruption of class, harassment, disorderly conduct, etc. Unless you are willing to make the complaint, the university can’t suspend anyone.
Please don’t give faculty the power to require mental evaluations. They’ll start to act on their belief that all the rest of their colleagues are mentally deranged. Just give them the will to do the right thing, even if it means they might need to take a little time away from other activities.
October 11th, 2009 at 7:44AM
UD, keep in mind that some parents are so used to their kids’ strange behavior that it becomes normal and unobjectionable as long as it is not overtly violent, and so far, this guy is not reported to have been physically violent before. Yet other parental types are so eager to get Bruno or Brunhilde out of the house that they conceal or dissemble all of the problems. We have had students who were obviously mentally ill even at the time of application, yet often the interviewing admissions counselors claimed not to see any warning signs. Many of these students can be helped, but clearly the faculty need to know what the issues are.
Francofou, after many years of discussion, we finally have a policy that allows a prof to remove a disruptive student from a class. The bar is high, though.
October 11th, 2009 at 9:12AM
Ironically, Frank (the whistleblowing professor here) works on issues of self-policing and self-governance among Russian peasantry, a reaction to the incompetence, unwillingness, and inability of higher authorities to provide order.
I doubt, sadly, that Russian peasant solutions to violations of the social order would work well if applied in American university context.
October 11th, 2009 at 5:44PM
Bear in mind that after the tragedy at Virginia Tech, the administration there said they’d been legally barred from taking action on the (future) shooter even after he’d set fire to a dorm.
October 12th, 2009 at 6:15AM
It does look like time to overhaul the amazing privacy laws.