Posted on 04/18/2007 10:26:20 PM PDT by george76
Nearly two years earlier,( Nikki ) Giovanni had stood up to Cho Seung-Hui ...
He wore sunglasses to class and pulled his maroon knit cap down low over his forehead. When she tried to get him to participate in class discussion, his answer was silence.
"Sometimes, students try to intimidate you," ... "And I just assumed that he was trying to assert himself."
But then female students began complaining about Cho.
About five weeks into the semester, students told Giovanni that Cho was taking photographs of their legs and knees under the desks with his cell phone. She told him to stop, but the damage was already done.
Female students refused to come to class, submitting their work by computer instead. As for Cho, he was not adding anything to the classroom atmosphere, only detracting.
Police asked Giovanni not to disclose the exact content or nature of Cho's poetry. But she said it was not violent like other writings that have been circulating.
It was more invasive.
Roy alerted student affairs, the dean's office, even the campus police, but each said there was nothing they could do if Cho had made no overt threats against himself or others. So Roy took him on as a kind of personal tutor.
Giovanni encountered Cho only once after she removed him from class. She was walking down a campus path and noticed him coming toward her. They maintained eye contact until passing each other.
Giovanni, who had survived lung cancer, was determined she would not blink first.
"I was not going to look away as if I were afraid," she said. "To me he was a bully, and I had no fear of this child."
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
He sounds quite mentally ill.
Some people say he should have been expelled from the University, but if writing bad poetry and being rude to lecturers got you expelled ... well then ... quite a number of students would have to go!
Giovanni says that the future murderer drove 63 of 70 students away from her lecture. If true, that seems to have required quite extraordinary behavior - even given contemporary academic standards.
Howdy Roy. Who’s Roy?
.
Doesn’t really matter...an individual like that could have been expelled and then come back for revenge...he needed to be in a nut ward....but all of this is 20/20.
I don’t know about everyone else...but i haven’t stopped thinking about his family...what a terrible burden for them to carry :(
An English professor with a grip on reality.
You could knock me over with a feather.
She did not blink first.
A good sign.
I have taught people with bipolar syndrome, schizophrenia and other problems in college. A friend of mine taught a woman who had multiple personalities (one of the personalities was a small child. That was a weird person to try to teach composition to.)
There are a lot of the walking wounded in any college crowd.
Most people with mental illnesses are not a danger, and ought to be as welcome in college as anyone. Problem is how to protect people from the ones like Cho.
Cho Seung-hui, the accused Virginia Tech shooter, had been declared an imminent danger to himself and voluntarily hospitalized as mentally ill.
A court document Wednesday said the 23-year-old South Korean immigrant — a senior English major at the Blacksburg, Va., campus — was referred to a mental health facility Dec. 13, 2005, CNN reported.
Campus police took Cho to St. Albans Behavioral Health Center, a Montgomery County mental facility, after authorities and fellow students feared he was suicidal — following allegations he was stalking two female students.
I thought he had been bitching about debauchery.
LOL! Maybe you didn't mean it as a joke, but as a new professor, it's funny to me. I think you are quite correct.
Takes one to know one?
One never quite knows the whole story in cases like this but we do not exist independent of the influences of the family that raised us. I am implying the likelihood that the parents had more than a little influence in how their son turned out, and are therefore themselves potentially culpable for some of his deviancy. People who are cherished and loved in appropriate ways do not become mass murderers (barring something such as a brain tumor or disease that alters the person's mental state).
Say what you want to say about her, but she seems to have been the only person with authority at VT who saw the maniac for what he was and attempted to do something about it. It wasn’t enough, but she tried and it isn’t her fault...
The truly sad fact: IF this fool’s mental health record had been available to state law enforcement officials, his gun permit could have been denied. He may have still gotten guns but it would have been more difficult.
There is no logic to his rant against “rich kids”. His 9mm cost over $500. I don’t know many college kids with that kind of disposable income, particularly when they don’t have a job. He speaks of those “having to dig their own grave”? When did he ever have to dig his own grave? or any other of the maudlin, melodramatic stuff he rants about? His “manifesto” came off as being nothing more than moribund self pity.
I'm not so sympathetic to the family. This punk had extreme anti-social and psychotic behavior all through college (4 years) and at least a portion of high school.
So, this punk almost said nothing, not a word, to anybody and had extremely anti-social behavior for a period of between 5 - 8 years.
If I had acted that way at that age and for that long I would have gotten my ass kicked by my dad and then sent to an institution by my mom.
I certainly wouldn't have been sent to Tech to get a college degree.
It's not like this kid had trouble making friends or was shy. He had one-word responses to any and all human contact, or would just turn his head and ignore you without saying anything. This went on for YEARS.
I'm speculating, but I'm sure he acted this way with his parents. From watching all the Tech students describe this guy (even people that went to high school with him), he was always consistent. His behavior never, ever changed. Ever. Every one of them said the exact same thing: he was quiet, never said anything, blank expressionless face, etc.
I agree, see my previous post.
Things like this don't happen in a vacuum.
Sounds like one of those big days in a college professor’s life she can look back on.
Thank God these people have been taken in by universities, otherwise they would probably be in the employment of a pimp somewhere (or worse).
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