So join me in the revolution stourley and stop scaring the shit out of me with that rascist shit. I highly, HIGHLY, doubt that those "cracker ass honkeys", of which group I AM a part of, are going to pull a 1950s on the asian kids!
i'm watching the vigil on t.v. and people can't even have a god damn vigil without having pepsi or coke plastered on screen...have some class and get some nicer candle drip catchers without damn advertisements!!!!!!
i havent watched any thing on this except lehrer for a bout five minutes. i havent listened to anything about it either because everyone is asking how can this unthinkable thing occur. why doesnt it occur more should be the question.
Today's Virginia is hardly the same as 1950s Mississippi... Or even today's Mississippi, for that matter. I don't think other Asian kids have to worry about any reprisal. This incident is clearly the work of one nut job, and even the most seasoned racist idiots prefer to blame African-Americans and Jews for society's ills.
So, I imagine it's only a matter of time before the media goes through the killler's C.D. collection and Playstation games... It's all beginning to sound the same every time one of these things happens. We go through the motions of blaming lax gun control, video games, movies, and a violence-obsessed culture, but nothing ever changes. I think this is going to require action on both sides of the political spectrum... Conservatives are going to have to give ground on the gun control debate, and Liberals are going to have to give ground on the cultural side.
Some people are. The kid apparently had "Ismail Ax" written in red ink on one of his arms, which has led a few half wits to suggest he may have been a muslim convert.
why do we need to televise our grief and sorrows? why do we need to cry in front of the camera?...
i fuckin can't stand it when family and friends of the of the victims have to be interviewed and cry on the screen...do we need to see this much detail?...can't we conclude on our own that the friends and families are grieving and are crying with their loved ones?...
I understand how you guys are hating the media right now, and I personally don't watch TV because I think it's crap, but honestly this is how we grieve, as a nation. The television is still the most powerful glue that allows us to band together and overcome a crisis. Let them cry, let all the mothers and fathers shed their tears across this country. The media will play it because we, the people asking why, need it.
Vado I agree, I wonder why this doesn't happen more often.
Don't get me wrong, I hate what has happened, but at the same time I want our country to become a better place to live. Change ain't gonna happen without pain and tragedy.
Whether or not this catastrophe will bring about positive change, from the grassroots up, or bring us a slight step closer to a surveillance, police state, remains to be seen.
it begins..now there saying the killer listened to 'shine' by collective soul over and over again. hmmm..draw your own conclusions. but i feel for this information to be given someone must've asked (and maybe got not quite the answer they were looking for?)
its funny cause all i can think of now his how my freshmen dorm roommate listed to that pink floyd song 'high hopes' and 'who's gonna ride your wild horses' over and over and over again.. nice guy, though...ahh, memories..
Give me a word
Give me a sign
Show me where to look
Tell what will I find ( will I find )
Lay me on the ground
Fly me in the sky
Show me where to look
Tell me what will I find ( will I find )
Oh, heaven let your light shine down (x4)
Love is in the water
Love is in the air
Show me where to go
Tell me will love be there ( love be there )
Teach me how to speak
Teach me how to share
Teach me where to go
Tell me will love be there ( love be there )
Oh, heaven let your light shine down (x4)
Im going to let it shine (x2)
Heavens little light gonna shine on me
Yea yea heavens little light gonna shine on me
Its gonna shine, shine on me
Its gonna shine, come on in shine
i always figured if i did go on a killing spree i wouldn't want to drag a favorite and respected musician/band's name through the mud by associating them with my murderous rage...i'd pretend that someone like nickelback or staind or rob thomas were what i was listening too heavily...you know, just to f with the media. ...makes you wonder...
I keep thinking how I had a roommate in college who was really unhappy and odd. She was moody, picked fights with us, wouldn’t tell us her last name (mail came to her with different last names) and she ate out of the garbage at least once. She constantly played Jimmy Eat World - The Middle which I thought was a good sign since the message was good albeit annoying. I was friendly with her because I wanted to keep the peace but I also made fun of her with our other roommates. It bothers me how my friends and I can still retell these stories with an odd sense of glee when clearly there was something wrong with her. Maybe a lesson to take away from this is to be aware of the people around you and to try to help if you can. It’s so easy to avoid (or worse) people with mental health problems rather than trying to understand if there’s something they need that you can provide.
My roommate freshman year used to really "rock out" (air guitar & air drums) to that contemporary christian rock crap. Definitely something wrong with him!!!
Update: apparently between the two shootings, the killer mailed a video he composed of himself to a news network. They said that he doesn't refer directly to the shootings, but says things like "this didn't have to happen."
most interesting experience i had in europe was being berated by a short man standing on a soapbox @ speaker's corner, hyde park. this was about a year after we invaded iraq, and somehow my failure to prevent bush from invading proved i was complicit and should be held accountable/beheaded.
VT students have refused to do interviews with NBC in protest because they aired the killer's videos. I would imagine this would extend to ABC, CBS, CNN, etc...
GOOD FOR THEM
and this morning many of the psychologists + FBI profilers who were supposed to be interviewed condemned every news show who aired the killers' videos- saying that the person in that video was not the real killer, he was just trying to portray himself as a martyr and the more the media shows it the more they feed into it- and what we really know about him was that he was a depressed schizo with serious issues...
Apparently some families of the victims were scheduled to be interviewed on the Today Show this morning, but abruptly cancelled the interviews in protest over NBC's airings of the videos. So Katie Curic and Matt Lauer were forced to fumble around on the air this morning and rationalize why their bosses aired the videos. I switched over to BBC America after about the first 30 seconds of it.
Now it seems like any delusional psychopath with an axe to grind now has a sure-fire recipe for getting their manifesto out to a mass audience. Didn't this begin with some newspaper (Washington Post, maybe?) agreeing to publish the Unibomber's screeds?
well after all, we have to try the dead murderer in the media- it's only fair he gets a media trial.
i mean what is the point in showing all of his graphic videos and pictures? he did it. everyone knows he did- he admitted it- and he's dead. what are we gonna do next? put his parents on trial too? he was 23 years old. this was his fault. he's a fucking adult. there is no one to blame but him.
let these people go through the grieving, mourning, hope, and love they need one step at a time. reach out to them in love- not mockery.
i hope the whole university boycotts the media and kicks every newscrew off the campus. let brian williams and the rest of them do their "evening reports on the massacre" from a cow patty field across the street.
all the media coverage isn't doing the university any good, anyways. can you imagine what the grad school thread will look like next year??? all those people who would have applied to VT will now be applying to UVA, UMich, etc.
kick the media off VT's campus. dont let them roam all over your campus and in your buildings and film your dorms. they are making a mockery out of you and your loss. VT is a campus of 26,000 students- add that to families, professors, etc... and you have a good amount of people who can refuse to let the media make a mockery of this.
If this scumbag was so into martyrdom and film-making, why didn't he just cram both of those guns into his CARP MOUTH and blow the back of his head off onto the CMU wall - then we may have felt sorry for him and the pain he has endured. What a complete piece of shit. Good riddance carp face, now give us our over-achieving (cognac-drinking) victims back god-damnit!
Ok, so I don't necessarily agree that the networks should have showed those videos.....it looks like most of them are continuing to make it available too....I do think it probably fuels whatever psychopaths or copycats may be out there and gives them ideas that they may have not had before.
I'm going to play devil's advocate for a minute though. I don't hate the media. I think they have a job to do, and quite often in the midst of their job they catch a lot of criticism for reporting on issues that people may not want to know about. They feel it's their responsibility to tell the whole story....and to let the public decide for themselves.
As for the families of the victims who had agreed to go on the Today Show but backed out after the videos were played, why the hell are they agreeing to go on live national television to begin with, just 2 days after their loved ones have been murdered? Who does that? This is a fiasco, and a series of failures in the system that we are learning more and more about every hour, so they are being subjected to a whole range of emotions.....they probably haven't started grieving properly yet, just leave them alone and give them their space.
This whole thing is such a circus, it just strikes me as a lot of people making hasty decisions based on emotions.
One of the letters to the editor in today's NY Times actually offered one of the more practical ideas for how to head off something like this in the future:
To the Editor:
Once again, a mentally disturbed individual has wreaked havoc on a community, and we are left wondering how we might reduce the chances of this sort of tragedy occurring again.
A psychologist friend of mine made what I think is the most creative and also the most practical suggestion I have yet heard. Why not require yearly mental health checkups of all students in high school and college? By making them routine, we would remove any stigma.
Those identified with problems could be scheduled for more frequent checkups. And the practice would encourage a sensible long-term habit.
Preventive mental health care makes as much sense as any other kind of preventive medicine. Millions go to the dentist for regular checkups. But which is more important: our state of mind or the state of our teeth?
Emrys Westacott
Alfred, N.Y., April 18, 2007
I think this idea deserves a lot of consideration. In addition to possibly heading off another massacre, I think many students with less severe mental health issues could also benefit.
Oh boy, a pot of gold for the psychologists and psychiatrists.
Psychiatrists in particular don't work. They just prolong the problem and suck as much cash from you as they possibly can. The problem doesn't go away.
It's the fucking meds, wake up already. Psychologists are always trying to expand their influence. How about taking a look at the dark history of the so-called mental health industry? There are a whole hell of a lot of skeletons in that closet.
Psychological profiling rarely works. Neither do meds. The kid was seriously disturbed. You don't need a shrink or a psychologist to tell you that - his English teacher and everyone else ALREADY NEW. The obvious problem is, how can this guy then go out and purchase two hand guns? Reevaluate your society. Don't sell guns to seriously disturbed individuals. Getting someone help does not mean hiring a psychologist. It means creating a society where this kind of shit does not happen. Stop medicating, start listening.
Gin- I think that's an excellent idea, as far as it goes. The trouble is, what does the high school or college do when someone's yearly mental exam raises some red flags? Do they gently try to help them, or do they kick them out of school "for the safety of the other students"? The worse the consequences are, the less honest people will be in their exams.
ill say it like this--- i dont know the difference in this situation- if any- between a public university versus a private university... but my undergrad university was a private school and there was a saying "out by five". out by five meant that if you did anything- i mean anything from threatening/assaulting someone to wearing your hat in a building- the university could make you pack your bags and be sitting out on the curb by 5pm waiting for your next ride home because you had been expelled from the university.
now i am not saying this is a solution for everything... but it would certainly give the potential for administrators to take serious action in regards to keeping/expelling the student from the university in the case of severe behavioural problems.
i'll agree with the letter to the editor from LIG's post, with one caveat: why wouldnt these mental health records be apart of the background check when applying for a gun/weapon, etc? why is there no relationship? it's like "oh person X has never been convicted of a crime- so here's a gun- but oh shit, theyve been committed to a mental institution" wtf is that
we cannot prevent these things... but we have to make sure we are not enablers, either.
That's something that would have to be worked out among the professionals; I honestly have no clear answers for that question. If somebody is deemed to be a danger to themselves and/or others, then mandatory institutionalization seems to be in order. It's looking like Mr. Cho certainly fit that criteria back in 2005, and questions need to be raised about why he wasn't committed at that point. Perhaps the standard of what demonstrates "a danger to others" needs to be re-examined. For people with less severe problems, then referrals to proper treatment should be provided.
Speaking as somebody who has dealt with clinical depression off and on my entire life, I feel like ten years of my life were wasted because I never got treatment for it, even though the symptoms were always there. Some sort of mandatory screening back in high school or early college years could have been life-changing. (As it turned out, I finally began treatment in 2003 after a particularly severe episode, but taking the first step was about the hardest thing I ever did. Thankfully, it helped immensely and I've finally been able to get my shit together since then.)
oh i am totally aware of prozac and all the rest of the antidepressants.
in fact my own mother went through two breakdowns and is on a combination of antidepressants and therapy for the rest of her life. some days are good- some days are not so good- but as long as she does what she needs to do to keep herself stable there isnt a day which was as bad as it used to be.
with that being said, i would in no way ever ever say she should be allowed to purchase a gun. because, while she is stable when she is on the medication- should she ever decide not to take it she would immediately become unstable and be a danger to herself and maybe inadvertently to others. we actually had a conversation about this the other night, and she even agreed with me.
there is definitely a relationship between mental health and what happened here- that is obvious.
Funding for mental health facilities in the first place would go a long way to people not being passed around, but actually getting help.
The mental health funding in this country is atrocious. Most are left to the jail system...which eventually just lets them back out on the streets...many many homeless are mentally ill, and there is no system to help with that aspect of their condition.
It is sad that it takes incidences like this to see why mental health funding, federally, and locally - is very necessary.
Also, the general public has no real idea of the rate at which mental illness effects our population..its staggering actually.
"More than 90 percent of people who kill themselves have a diagnosable mental disorder, most commonly a depressive disorder or a substance abuse disorder"
Funding for mental health, I believe, would do more to directly confront the issue at hand.
Although, I am all for more restrictions in both the background check and the time you get the gun, specifically for large capacity clip handguns which are basically made to conceal and kill...one animal - humans.
That said, I still believe the mental health issue is the more acute issue.
Agreed, jasoncross. It's a national disgrace. Our entire healthcare system is set up to be reactive rather than proactive; nothing gets done until the problem reaches a crisis stage, at which point it's often too late to do any good.
A major overhaul of the healthcare system is needed, but that's a topic for another thread. As it stands now, though, almost every college requires mandatory health insurance and vaccinations; it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to require mandatory mental health screenings as well. Hell, most major universities already have their own hospitals and medical schools.
i personally found this appalling- because i didnt know what the extent of a handgun background check contained- that basically it amounts to you filling out a piece of paper asking you if you have ever been "involuntarily committed to a mental health institution"... cho answered "no" on this section. and then he got a gun obviously.
since that came out the other day everyone has been like "omg he lied"... well what the fuck did you think would happen???
Shooting + Murder at VIRGINIA TECH
I certainly hope so, Stourley.
So join me in the revolution stourley and stop scaring the shit out of me with that rascist shit. I highly, HIGHLY, doubt that those "cracker ass honkeys", of which group I AM a part of, are going to pull a 1950s on the asian kids!
i'm watching the vigil on t.v. and people can't even have a god damn vigil without having pepsi or coke plastered on screen...have some class and get some nicer candle drip catchers without damn advertisements!!!!!!
i havent watched any thing on this except lehrer for a bout five minutes. i havent listened to anything about it either because everyone is asking how can this unthinkable thing occur. why doesnt it occur more should be the question.
Today's Virginia is hardly the same as 1950s Mississippi... Or even today's Mississippi, for that matter. I don't think other Asian kids have to worry about any reprisal. This incident is clearly the work of one nut job, and even the most seasoned racist idiots prefer to blame African-Americans and Jews for society's ills.
So, I imagine it's only a matter of time before the media goes through the killler's C.D. collection and Playstation games... It's all beginning to sound the same every time one of these things happens. We go through the motions of blaming lax gun control, video games, movies, and a violence-obsessed culture, but nothing ever changes. I think this is going to require action on both sides of the political spectrum... Conservatives are going to have to give ground on the gun control debate, and Liberals are going to have to give ground on the cultural side.
largest mass murder in u.s. history?
murrah building in OKC
mountain meadows
bath bombings
camp grant
wounded knee
sand creek
were all larger. they just weren't covered by no-talent ass clowns like brian williams
wow. great. so far nobody blamed muslims...
i wonder how many people in the vigil are actually emotionally there...and how many people just want to belong to the activity of the mass?
"wow. great. so far nobody blamed muslims..."
Some people are. The kid apparently had "Ismail Ax" written in red ink on one of his arms, which has led a few half wits to suggest he may have been a muslim convert.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/04/17/va_tech_mass_shootin.html
oh oh. i spoke too soon.
why do we need to televise our grief and sorrows? why do we need to cry in front of the camera?...
i fuckin can't stand it when family and friends of the of the victims have to be interviewed and cry on the screen...do we need to see this much detail?...can't we conclude on our own that the friends and families are grieving and are crying with their loved ones?...
apparently there is a market, because people seem to keep watching.
I understand how you guys are hating the media right now, and I personally don't watch TV because I think it's crap, but honestly this is how we grieve, as a nation. The television is still the most powerful glue that allows us to band together and overcome a crisis. Let them cry, let all the mothers and fathers shed their tears across this country. The media will play it because we, the people asking why, need it.
Vado I agree, I wonder why this doesn't happen more often.
Don't get me wrong, I hate what has happened, but at the same time I want our country to become a better place to live. Change ain't gonna happen without pain and tragedy.
Whether or not this catastrophe will bring about positive change, from the grassroots up, or bring us a slight step closer to a surveillance, police state, remains to be seen.
it begins..now there saying the killer listened to 'shine' by collective soul over and over again. hmmm..draw your own conclusions. but i feel for this information to be given someone must've asked (and maybe got not quite the answer they were looking for?)
its funny cause all i can think of now his how my freshmen dorm roommate listed to that pink floyd song 'high hopes' and 'who's gonna ride your wild horses' over and over and over again.. nice guy, though...ahh, memories..
Give me a word
Give me a sign
Show me where to look
Tell what will I find ( will I find )
Lay me on the ground
Fly me in the sky
Show me where to look
Tell me what will I find ( will I find )
Oh, heaven let your light shine down (x4)
Love is in the water
Love is in the air
Show me where to go
Tell me will love be there ( love be there )
Teach me how to speak
Teach me how to share
Teach me where to go
Tell me will love be there ( love be there )
Oh, heaven let your light shine down (x4)
Im going to let it shine (x2)
Heavens little light gonna shine on me
Yea yea heavens little light gonna shine on me
Its gonna shine, shine on me
Its gonna shine, come on in shine
Collective Soul?!?
God, they were awful...
i always figured if i did go on a killing spree i wouldn't want to drag a favorite and respected musician/band's name through the mud by associating them with my murderous rage...i'd pretend that someone like nickelback or staind or rob thomas were what i was listening too heavily...you know, just to f with the media. ...makes you wonder...
I keep thinking how I had a roommate in college who was really unhappy and odd. She was moody, picked fights with us, wouldn’t tell us her last name (mail came to her with different last names) and she ate out of the garbage at least once. She constantly played Jimmy Eat World - The Middle which I thought was a good sign since the message was good albeit annoying. I was friendly with her because I wanted to keep the peace but I also made fun of her with our other roommates. It bothers me how my friends and I can still retell these stories with an odd sense of glee when clearly there was something wrong with her. Maybe a lesson to take away from this is to be aware of the people around you and to try to help if you can. It’s so easy to avoid (or worse) people with mental health problems rather than trying to understand if there’s something they need that you can provide.
My roommate freshman year used to really "rock out" (air guitar & air drums) to that contemporary christian rock crap. Definitely something wrong with him!!!
Update: apparently between the two shootings, the killer mailed a video he composed of himself to a news network. They said that he doesn't refer directly to the shootings, but says things like "this didn't have to happen."
so whats the difference between al jazeera showing osama's "manifestos" and nbc showing this guy's "manifesto"
None that I can see. He wanted a soapbox and got one.
most interesting experience i had in europe was being berated by a short man standing on a soapbox @ speaker's corner, hyde park. this was about a year after we invaded iraq, and somehow my failure to prevent bush from invading proved i was complicit and should be held accountable/beheaded.
LOL!
oh by the way its the 12th anniversery of the murrow building bombing.
VT students have refused to do interviews with NBC in protest because they aired the killer's videos. I would imagine this would extend to ABC, CBS, CNN, etc...
GOOD FOR THEM
and this morning many of the psychologists + FBI profilers who were supposed to be interviewed condemned every news show who aired the killers' videos- saying that the person in that video was not the real killer, he was just trying to portray himself as a martyr and the more the media shows it the more they feed into it- and what we really know about him was that he was a depressed schizo with serious issues...
RIGHT ON
it seems to me that all that would be evidence anyway and the feds(since it was mailed across state lines) should have scooped it all up.
they did, and then gave permission to the news station to air certain portions of it.
well, that wasnt very smart.
Apparently some families of the victims were scheduled to be interviewed on the Today Show this morning, but abruptly cancelled the interviews in protest over NBC's airings of the videos. So Katie Curic and Matt Lauer were forced to fumble around on the air this morning and rationalize why their bosses aired the videos. I switched over to BBC America after about the first 30 seconds of it.
Now it seems like any delusional psychopath with an axe to grind now has a sure-fire recipe for getting their manifesto out to a mass audience. Didn't this begin with some newspaper (Washington Post, maybe?) agreeing to publish the Unibomber's screeds?
well after all, we have to try the dead murderer in the media- it's only fair he gets a media trial.
i mean what is the point in showing all of his graphic videos and pictures? he did it. everyone knows he did- he admitted it- and he's dead. what are we gonna do next? put his parents on trial too? he was 23 years old. this was his fault. he's a fucking adult. there is no one to blame but him.
let these people go through the grieving, mourning, hope, and love they need one step at a time. reach out to them in love- not mockery.
i hope the whole university boycotts the media and kicks every newscrew off the campus. let brian williams and the rest of them do their "evening reports on the massacre" from a cow patty field across the street.
all the media coverage isn't doing the university any good, anyways. can you imagine what the grad school thread will look like next year??? all those people who would have applied to VT will now be applying to UVA, UMich, etc.
kick the media off VT's campus. dont let them roam all over your campus and in your buildings and film your dorms. they are making a mockery out of you and your loss. VT is a campus of 26,000 students- add that to families, professors, etc... and you have a good amount of people who can refuse to let the media make a mockery of this.
I do believe it was the fine periodical Penthouse that initially gave the Unabomber the outlet he needed.
If this scumbag was so into martyrdom and film-making, why didn't he just cram both of those guns into his CARP MOUTH and blow the back of his head off onto the CMU wall - then we may have felt sorry for him and the pain he has endured. What a complete piece of shit. Good riddance carp face, now give us our over-achieving (cognac-drinking) victims back god-damnit!
apurimac- i think u confused this thread with the "how do you relieve stress" thread hehe
hey man, somebody's gotta lighten the mood at some point.
i haven't watched the news yet since this happened. seems to help a lot. try it sometime.
vt is going to posthumously give degrees.
i think this is a fabulous idea.
and i'll third (fourth, fifth) that the media needs to take their sheisty reporters somewhere else.
Ok, so I don't necessarily agree that the networks should have showed those videos.....it looks like most of them are continuing to make it available too....I do think it probably fuels whatever psychopaths or copycats may be out there and gives them ideas that they may have not had before.
I'm going to play devil's advocate for a minute though. I don't hate the media. I think they have a job to do, and quite often in the midst of their job they catch a lot of criticism for reporting on issues that people may not want to know about. They feel it's their responsibility to tell the whole story....and to let the public decide for themselves.
As for the families of the victims who had agreed to go on the Today Show but backed out after the videos were played, why the hell are they agreeing to go on live national television to begin with, just 2 days after their loved ones have been murdered? Who does that? This is a fiasco, and a series of failures in the system that we are learning more and more about every hour, so they are being subjected to a whole range of emotions.....they probably haven't started grieving properly yet, just leave them alone and give them their space.
This whole thing is such a circus, it just strikes me as a lot of people making hasty decisions based on emotions.
One of the letters to the editor in today's NY Times actually offered one of the more practical ideas for how to head off something like this in the future:
To the Editor:
Once again, a mentally disturbed individual has wreaked havoc on a community, and we are left wondering how we might reduce the chances of this sort of tragedy occurring again.
A psychologist friend of mine made what I think is the most creative and also the most practical suggestion I have yet heard. Why not require yearly mental health checkups of all students in high school and college? By making them routine, we would remove any stigma.
Those identified with problems could be scheduled for more frequent checkups. And the practice would encourage a sensible long-term habit.
Preventive mental health care makes as much sense as any other kind of preventive medicine. Millions go to the dentist for regular checkups. But which is more important: our state of mind or the state of our teeth?
Emrys Westacott
Alfred, N.Y., April 18, 2007
I think this idea deserves a lot of consideration. In addition to possibly heading off another massacre, I think many students with less severe mental health issues could also benefit.
Oh boy, a pot of gold for the psychologists and psychiatrists.
Psychiatrists in particular don't work. They just prolong the problem and suck as much cash from you as they possibly can. The problem doesn't go away.
It's the fucking meds, wake up already. Psychologists are always trying to expand their influence. How about taking a look at the dark history of the so-called mental health industry? There are a whole hell of a lot of skeletons in that closet.
Psychological profiling rarely works. Neither do meds. The kid was seriously disturbed. You don't need a shrink or a psychologist to tell you that - his English teacher and everyone else ALREADY NEW. The obvious problem is, how can this guy then go out and purchase two hand guns? Reevaluate your society. Don't sell guns to seriously disturbed individuals. Getting someone help does not mean hiring a psychologist. It means creating a society where this kind of shit does not happen. Stop medicating, start listening.
Gin- I think that's an excellent idea, as far as it goes. The trouble is, what does the high school or college do when someone's yearly mental exam raises some red flags? Do they gently try to help them, or do they kick them out of school "for the safety of the other students"? The worse the consequences are, the less honest people will be in their exams.
ill say it like this--- i dont know the difference in this situation- if any- between a public university versus a private university... but my undergrad university was a private school and there was a saying "out by five". out by five meant that if you did anything- i mean anything from threatening/assaulting someone to wearing your hat in a building- the university could make you pack your bags and be sitting out on the curb by 5pm waiting for your next ride home because you had been expelled from the university.
now i am not saying this is a solution for everything... but it would certainly give the potential for administrators to take serious action in regards to keeping/expelling the student from the university in the case of severe behavioural problems.
i'll agree with the letter to the editor from LIG's post, with one caveat: why wouldnt these mental health records be apart of the background check when applying for a gun/weapon, etc? why is there no relationship? it's like "oh person X has never been convicted of a crime- so here's a gun- but oh shit, theyve been committed to a mental institution" wtf is that
we cannot prevent these things... but we have to make sure we are not enablers, either.
Ask yourself, "What is homicidal ideation?"
http://www.drugawareness.org/home.html
That's something that would have to be worked out among the professionals; I honestly have no clear answers for that question. If somebody is deemed to be a danger to themselves and/or others, then mandatory institutionalization seems to be in order. It's looking like Mr. Cho certainly fit that criteria back in 2005, and questions need to be raised about why he wasn't committed at that point. Perhaps the standard of what demonstrates "a danger to others" needs to be re-examined. For people with less severe problems, then referrals to proper treatment should be provided.
Speaking as somebody who has dealt with clinical depression off and on my entire life, I feel like ten years of my life were wasted because I never got treatment for it, even though the symptoms were always there. Some sort of mandatory screening back in high school or early college years could have been life-changing. (As it turned out, I finally began treatment in 2003 after a particularly severe episode, but taking the first step was about the hardest thing I ever did. Thankfully, it helped immensely and I've finally been able to get my shit together since then.)
oh i am totally aware of prozac and all the rest of the antidepressants.
in fact my own mother went through two breakdowns and is on a combination of antidepressants and therapy for the rest of her life. some days are good- some days are not so good- but as long as she does what she needs to do to keep herself stable there isnt a day which was as bad as it used to be.
with that being said, i would in no way ever ever say she should be allowed to purchase a gun. because, while she is stable when she is on the medication- should she ever decide not to take it she would immediately become unstable and be a danger to herself and maybe inadvertently to others. we actually had a conversation about this the other night, and she even agreed with me.
there is definitely a relationship between mental health and what happened here- that is obvious.
Funding for mental health facilities in the first place would go a long way to people not being passed around, but actually getting help.
The mental health funding in this country is atrocious. Most are left to the jail system...which eventually just lets them back out on the streets...many many homeless are mentally ill, and there is no system to help with that aspect of their condition.
It is sad that it takes incidences like this to see why mental health funding, federally, and locally - is very necessary.
Also, the general public has no real idea of the rate at which mental illness effects our population..its staggering actually.
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/numbers.cfm#Intro
in 2004 more than 30,000 people committed suicide
"More than 90 percent of people who kill themselves have a diagnosable mental disorder, most commonly a depressive disorder or a substance abuse disorder"
Funding for mental health, I believe, would do more to directly confront the issue at hand.
Although, I am all for more restrictions in both the background check and the time you get the gun, specifically for large capacity clip handguns which are basically made to conceal and kill...one animal - humans.
That said, I still believe the mental health issue is the more acute issue.
Agreed, jasoncross. It's a national disgrace. Our entire healthcare system is set up to be reactive rather than proactive; nothing gets done until the problem reaches a crisis stage, at which point it's often too late to do any good.
A major overhaul of the healthcare system is needed, but that's a topic for another thread. As it stands now, though, almost every college requires mandatory health insurance and vaccinations; it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to require mandatory mental health screenings as well. Hell, most major universities already have their own hospitals and medical schools.
i personally found this appalling- because i didnt know what the extent of a handgun background check contained- that basically it amounts to you filling out a piece of paper asking you if you have ever been "involuntarily committed to a mental health institution"... cho answered "no" on this section. and then he got a gun obviously.
since that came out the other day everyone has been like "omg he lied"... well what the fuck did you think would happen???
i got more of a background check when i worked at a bank during college than this douchebag got for a handgun.
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