it’s pretty hard to rise to the level of getting pointed out as being so weird that there needs to be some kind of intervention. There is such a strong ethos “who am I to say who or what is (insert favorite word here) evil, wrong, insane, perverted, criminal, that students have a ready-made template for ignoring someone like Cho. It’s already the default option.

smellthecoffee on April 22, 2007 at 11:31 PM

You’re right, however that didn’t happen in this case. The campus community did point out his anti-social behavior. It was the psychiatric community that dropped the ball. Everyone is diagnosing Cho as this or that. Too bad the Blacksburg shrinks didn’t share that view.

Wonder if that’s why Cho’s strange behavior was tolerated as just weird….

This touches on another aspect of this whole thing that I haven’t heard too much said about. Since on a typical college campus, you have people with bizarre piercings, hair color and style, outlandish clothes, white people with dread-locks, guys wearing dresses, you name it, all in the name of “life-style choice,” it’s pretty hard to rise to the level of getting pointed out as being so weird that there needs to be some kind of intervention. There is such a strong ethos “who am I to say who or what is (insert favorite word here) evil, wrong, insane, perverted, criminal, that students have a ready-made template for ignoring someone like Cho. It’s already the default option.

Using the victim-to-perpetrator cycle of those who have been sexually abused is an interesting idea, but unfortunately without merit.

I appreciate the comment, unamused. It was a sort of thought experiment, because I feel like there ought to be a way to have Cho be responsible, and evil, and at the same time acknowledge that people around him didn’t do what they might have. When I was in college back in Ann Arbor, there was this girl who went off her meds, once, and started not sleeping, smoking dope, and wandering around with her hamsters in a cage, dressed in pj’s and bathrobe. She just got weirder and weirder. My then girlfriend knew her family from way back someplace (her parents knew this girl’s parents), and so one day she just stuffed this blossoming nutjob into her car, and drove non-stop to the Cleveland Clinic, and then went through 24 hours of hell, trying to get her admitted, while keeping track of this loopy chick who was wandering off all the time. This girlfriend of mine was like that, she would put herself out there for people she barely knew. Anyway, it is an example of what didn’t happen in Cho’s case. Say what you want. He was bizarre for a looooooong time, and that one teacher (who tutored him after Giovanni booted him out of her class) was the only one who tried to go to bat for him, only to be rebuffed by an adminstration handcuffed by rules that are designed to avoiding lawsuits, as opposed to accomplishing what is needed by the people on the ground. How much control did he really have? I’m not a psychiatrist, but I bet that how much control a person really has varies on a case by case basis. So no one knows or will ever know how culpable this guy really was at bottom. HE. IS. RESPONSIBLE. ULTIMATELY. But this needn’t have happened. This makes me want to watch the movie Beautiful Mind again. Btw, how accurate was that movie considered to be from a mental illness standpoint?

This has been going through my head for days. There is an amazing section in Deuteronomy, chapter 21 verses 1-9, which deals with a situation where a body is found outside of town, and no one knows how this person died. They measure to the nearest town, and then representatives of that town have to bring a heifer, which they take down into a “rough valley,” and break its neck. There is also an atonement ceremony in which all the elders of the town have to wash their hands over the dead heifer, and say, “Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it,” and this effects their atonement. Without getting humg up on the rather cryptic “fix” for this problem, what is striking about this passage is the extent to which people are expected to have knowledge and oversight over what is going on in their midst. This wasn’t a problem of commission, it was a problem of omission; they didn’t know what happened to this person, and because they had taken their eye off the ball, they are considered responsible to a certain extent.

We’re not holding anywhere near here.

tiekitwist on April 22, 2007 at 8:04 PM

Gee, I guess you told me. I look forward to more of your thought- provoking insight.

Anyways, I appreciate your permission to say something if I want to say it and read another thread if I get bored and disagree and debate and tell other people to shut up. Boy, I was really worried before you said that, but now I feel FREE!

P.S. I don’t really think I look like a schmuck. Pretty sure I’m just saying what a lot of people are thinking, and what’s it to you? Just saying… ;)

unamused on April 22, 2007 at 5:06 PM

Seriously, isn’t there some sort of limit to the number of times a person can beat a dead horse on a single thread?

tiekitwist on April 22, 2007 at 6:38 PM

Twist, if you’re bored read another thread. If you want to say something, say it. Don’t suggest other people not have their say especially when they’re making a great deal of sense about a subject they have extensive personal experience with. I have found unamused’s, and others’ comments compelling on this topic. You can disagree and debate all day here if you like. You can even tell someone to shut up sometimes too. If you do for no apparent reason you look like a shmuck. Just sayin, have a nice day.

unamused on April 22, 2007 at 5:06 PM

Seriously, isn’t there some sort of limit to the number of times a person can beat a dead horse on a single thread?

Mr. Skelton,
You do realize that by claiming Cho as a victim you are focusing the blame elsewhere?

The last thing a budding schizophrenic or bipolar needs to hear right now is that they are helpless in the face of their disease.

It’s this kind of find-your-inner-child BS that kept me sick for years AND drove me away from those who would help me pull myself up and carry on. Taking responsibility for oneself is VERY therapeutic for the mentally ill.

This is just irresponsible PC crap.

I’ll use myself because it’s what I know. I was molested, several times. I have not perpetrated the same upon anyone. In fact, it was one of my biggest fears in becoming a father. I recognize that it would be evil of me, and so I don’t do it.

Sure, bipolar disorder and a history of sexual abuse makes it so that I have what I consider evil impulses. I get the urge sometimes to do horrible things. I used to feel horrible about these thoughts and impulses until a friend asked me a simple question: “Does thinking about robbing a bank make you a bank robber?”

Evil is as evil does. Let’s set aside those who could have, and should have, stopped him before he got the guns. From the perspective of personal responsibility, he let the evil get out.

Allowing your sickness to get out and harm others is evil. Consider Hepatitis C or HIV. Those who contract it have a moral duty to NOT let it out to hurt others. When they do, they are evil, period.

I have had the makings of a ticking time-bomb more than once in my life, but two things intervened to stop me:

1. Friends/Family
2. My conscience (what was left of it)

The more I look at Cho and what he did, the less I see just plain schizo-effective disorder. I think he had a real psychotic break at some point. Those who know what real psychosis is know that you never come back from it, but you can certainly prevent it from happening.

He did not take care of himself and a college campus was the wrong place for such a person. He knew that and ultimately embraced the hate he had until it destroyed his mind.

“We are also here for the one who has also passed.”

Mr. Skelton,
You do realize that by claiming Cho as a victim you are focusing the blame elsewhere? And where else is responsible placed at VT?

Who else is in charge there at VT? Is that someone you, Mr. Skelton? Are you now placing blame on yourself for this murderous rampage?

Think this one through Mr. Skelton before running off at the mouth again. I think we can almost guarantee lawsuits with your effective transferance of responsibility from Cho to yourself.

So when they are kids they are victims, and we feel for them, and they hell that they have to live in, until they become adults and start molesting, and now they are monsters, sickos, perverts, etc.

Yes, exactly. Many people live through horrible things and then make the choices necessary to act decently and to not perpetuate cycles of abuse. What you might have been through may explain why you do things, but it will never excuse doing them.

Everything is a choice, and you can make the right one or you can make the wrong one. Unless you truly don’t know the difference between the two, then mental illness is no defense.

When people murder each other in South Korea, who do their college presidents appeal to for calm?

Jim Treacher on April 22, 2007 at 4:17 AM

Micronesians

3:22am? Holy crap, I need a life!

smellthecoffee on April 22, 2007 at 3:23 AM

As do many of us. But we aren’t killing 32 people.