Posted on 04/17/2007 11:41:34 AM PDT by Sleeping Freeper
BLACKSBURG, Va. - The gunman suspected of carrying out the Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 people dead was identified Tuesday as an English major whose creative writing was so disturbing that he was referred to the school's counseling service. News reports also said that he may have been taking medication for depression, that he was becoming increasingly violent and erratic, and that he left a note in his dorm in which he railed against ''rich kids," ''debauchery" and ''deceitful charlatans" on campus. Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old senior, arrived in the United States as boy from South Korea in 1992 and was raised in suburban Washington, D.C., officials said. He was living on campus in a different dorm from the one where Monday's bloodbath began. Police and university officials offered no clues as to exactly what set him off on the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.
(Excerpt) Read more at sltrib.com ...
However, I heard on talk radio this PM that the family is actually from North Korea. That makes one go hmmmm....we'd the kid get his training? Early reports said the shooter had to have either military training or a former policeman.
That ain't gonna happen!
My brother was paying for his adopted son's college tuition. The kid had some really shaky friends and partied himself into flunking a semester. The State University Extension WOULD NOT contact my brother about the failing grades because the kid was over eighteen and the "Privacy Act" would not allow them to speak out.
He did however, get the bills for the tuition just fine.
Regards,
GtG
I’m really quite confused. His parents are supposedly quite affluent. They live in an affluent neighborhood and he has a sister at Princeton. Why would he be going off on rich kids if he himself is one?
Do killing sprees like this ever make sense?
and of course the med mal lawyers will be comming out of the woodwork to sue the drug makers.
(edwards cronies will be happy)
You are obviously the exception that proves the rule!
Your BIL’s family is not alone. My Chinese friends make very a modest income and are very embarassed about it. Whenever their friends visit from China, they go shopping and buy all kinds of things they can’t afford. They had a baby last year and left him in China because they can’t “afford” him here. The parents of the wife won’t come here for a number of reasons, but one of them is her suspicion that they don’t have enough, to put it bluntly. I could tell lots of other stories too. It’s really sad.
>Did this guy not have roommates? Don’t most dorms have more than one person per room? Haven’t heard a thing about that.<
Yes, he did have roommates. They’ve been interviewed, and they were scared of him. He had an alter ego, (a “twin” brother he referred to as Question Mark) had an imaginary girlfriend, but stalked at least 3 girls, and wouldn’t turn lights off ever. There was more to the interview, but I had to turn it off and go to bed last night.
As an aside, there was some sort of altercation (bomb scare, I think) at Burrus Hall this morning. I heard it on local radio, and it’s been resolved now.
Here's another you may have missed. The original has been removed from the VT website, but the Googlecached version can still be seen at the link here:
Forum to address controversies over antidepressants
By Jean Elliott
BLACKSBURG, Va., October 31, 2005 -- Choices and Challenges at Virginia Tech will hold a public forum entitled “On Prozac: Debating the New Technologies of Mind,” a day-long series of panels and discussions to be held on Nov. 10 in the Graduate Life Center at Donaldson Brown. This forum is open to the public at no charge.
In 1987, a new class of antidepressant medications, the Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) appeared on the market, promising a cleaner, more effective treatment for depression, with greatly reduced side-effects. The first of these drugs, fluoxetene, better known by its trade name, Prozac, has become emblematic of the explosion in their use. In the United States, antidepressant use tripled in the 1990s. Roughly seven percent of the adult population is currently on an antidepressant. Even more controversially, these drugs are now prescribed to more and more children and adolescents.
The rapid adoption of these “technologies of mind” has not allowed for adequate public deliberation of their benefits and consequences. The Choices and Challenges forum is designed to provide a forum for such discussion.
“The routine use of these medications creates the illusion that their safety and efficacy are known quantities,” says Daniel Breslau, an associate professor in the Department of Science and Technology in Society in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, and a co-coordinator of the forum. “And beyond the question of their effectiveness, these drugs raise broad and urgent questions about the causes of emotional distress, how to define emotional and mental well-being, and the relation of mind to the brain’s physiology.”
To be informed consumers of mental health services, and informed participants in policy debates, the public needs to hear and engage with a wide variety of perspectives, including those of ethicists, historians, and philosophers of mind.
“Before treating the epidemic of depression as strictly a problem of brain chemistry, we need to explore social and ecological causes as well. That is one important aim of our forum,” said Eileen Crist, an associate professor in the Department of Science and Technology in Society and Choices and Challenges co-coordinator.
The forum’s main panel will feature a range of recognized authorities on various aspects of antidepressants, and will address ethical, medical, social, philosophical, and environmental dimensions of antidepressant use. The main panel discussion will take place at 11 a.m. Moderated by Joseph C. Pitt, head of the philosophy department at Virginia Tech, panelists include:
==> Samuel Barondes, director of the Center for Neurobiology and Psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco and author of “Better than Prozac: Creating the Next Generation of Psychiatric Drugs.”
==> Joseph Glenmullen, clinical instructor in psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and author of “Prozac Backlash” and “The Antidepressant Solution.”
==> Valerie Hardcastle, chair of the Department of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech, and author of “The Myth of Pain.”
==> David Kidner, associate Fellow for the British Psychological Society and author of “Nature and Psyche.”
==> E. Haavi Morreim, ethicist and professor in the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee and author of “Holding Health Care Accountable: Law and the New Medical Marketplace.”
A series of background and follow-up sessions, beginning at 8 a.m., will fill in with up-to-date materials and allow for audience participation. Session topics include history of antidepressants, the viability of clinical trials, how antidepressants are represented in the popular culture, and alternative perspectives on what many regard as an epidemic—depression.
In conjunction with the Choices and Challenges Forum, the Theater Arts department will present a performance piece, Life on the Pharm, written and conceptualized by Brandiff Caron and Ann Kilkelly, professor in the department of Interdisciplinary Studies. The piece, to be performed on Nov. 9-11 in 30 Pamplin Hall at 8 p.m. each night, will involve the audience in an interactive exploration of issues around depression and its treatment with pharmaceuticals.
The Choices and Challenges Project was founded in 1985, and has presented annual forums on issues of public concern involving science and technology. For more information, visit the website at http://www.choicesandchallenges.sts.vt.edu.
Contact Jean Elliott at elliottj@vt.edu or 231-5915.
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I am Korean, so I can fill it in. There is a lot of racism in Korea. It never ceases to amaze me and at the same time, it’s appalling. They tend to look down on people who are half Korean. That’s one reason for all those Korean childs being adapted in America. I know there is a lot of racism in Japan as well.
I hope you’re kidding. If the “Prozac made him do it” then it sounds like alot of people have grounds for a Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity defense.
It’s obvious that this guy was disturbed long before being prescribed anti-depressants.
Just consider the thousands of murders committed where prozac or other meds were not involved. It dwarfs those where prozac is somehow in the picture.
I’m shocked, I tell you. ;-) From all reports here and abroad, America invented racism. Go figure.
There, fixed it.
Depression is no fun. My heart goes out to you.
From the first I heard of the anti-depressants, I wondered what in the world the “counselors” were thinking.
I’m not a shrink, but this kid was not depressed, or at least he was not ONLY depressed. Schizophrenia? He was the right age for onset, and the symptoms certainly match.
Any Freepers who are mental health professionals care to comment?
In the world of moonbattery, yes they think that. Racism is everywhere.
Oh, I don’t know. Maybe they were trying to decide in the less than 10 seconds of warning they had who’d go first. After that, it was kind’ve hard to go forward with the plan because most were dead or couldn’t walk. Additionally, the shooter just wouldn’t cooperate. He kept walking in and out of the rooms, up and down the halls and with less than 15 minutes start to finish, the students just couldn’t come up with a quorum.
It's not beyond me. I'd have jumped him, denied him control of his weapon and told the rest of the crowd to finish him off, even with perforations.
"I’m guessing stricken with Sudden Jihad Syndrome"
Nah. Progressive psychosis.
Most Koreans are Presbyterians. Why would you think RC ?
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