Posted on 03/12/2008 9:56:45 AM PDT by kiriath_jearim
Steve Barber knew his fictional essay about a suicidal student bent on murder would generate quite a buzz within his creative-writing class at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise.
It was the expulsion from school and the weekend spent locked up in a mental health ward for observation that caught the 23-year-old freshman and former U.S. Navy sailor off guard.
The three guns that campus police later report finding in his car while parked in a school lot Feb. 29 didn’t help his cause either.
“I never intended for him [the creative-writing professor] to feel threatened by it. I never intended for the students to feel threatened,” Barber, of Scott County, said by phone Monday.
Today, Barber expects to learn if the appeal he filed with the school Monday will overturn last week’s expulsion ruling. If not, he said he might consider re-enlisting in the military.
Standing out in Barber’s nine-page, first-person narrative are a single reference to last year’s Virginia Tech massacre, the main character’s love affair with the “cold and heavy steel” of a pistol, and the character’s burning desire to kill his writing professor.
States the unnamed main character: “I was a Nihilist. There was no meaning to life: no purpose. there was no Designer, no Design; no Planner, no Plan; no Right, no Wrong; no good, no Evil. There were only temporary pleasures and infinite pains. More importantly, there was no Love. And soon Mr. Christopher, there will be no Life.”
Mr. Christopher is the main character’s writing professor. Barber, in recent posts to a pro-gun Internet chat room, notes that his writing instructor is named Christopher Scalia, who is the son of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
“This is the kind of thing we are going to take seriously until we know otherwise,” University Vice Chancellor Gary Juhan said Monday. “If we make a mistake, we will err on the side of the community.” U.Va.-Wise is on spring break, and students and faculty were not available for interviews on Monday.
Juhan declined to confirm Barber’s permanent expulsion, but did note that the student is banned from the campus. “This is a judicial process, and we don’t comment on a judicial process while ongoing,” Juhan said.
Though the guns found in the car might have violated school rules, it did not violate state law, Juhan said. The fictional essay, as well as the guns found in the car, convinced Scott County Commonwealth’s Attorney Marcus McClung to have a judge revoke Barber’s concealed-weapons permit, which allows him to carry hidden guns through Virginia.
A judge issued the permit to Barber nearly two years ago, court records show.
McClung, who could not be reached for comment Monday, successfully argued to a judge last week that Barber should not legally have the permit since he was “involuntarily committed,” according to Scott County Circuit Court documents.
In his court motion, McClung notes that “Steven Daniel Barber wrote a paper which threatens a professor and himself; that in the paper Steven Daniel Barber mentions the killings at Virginia Tech.”
Barber’s story grabbed attention almost as soon as it reached his professor’s hands on Feb. 28. A campus police officer wrote that he approached Barber after his first class the next morning to talk about the essay.
Much of Barber’s fictional story, told through the inner monologue of the main character, focuses on the virtues of alcohol and mind-altering drugs before arriving at the conclusion of suicide and murder. Throughout the story, the character rambles on about the last-minute search for an essay topic, due the next morning to “Mr. Christopher.”
The single reference to Virginia Tech comes as the character explains that he keeps a gun under his pillow because of a paranoia that other students might hurt him.
He ends the story with this thought: “As I read back over this now, I realized that every mistake is brilliance. Rules are for the establishment, and breaking the rules is for the outlaw. And whether you like to admit it now or not, the outlaws shape the history books. A world without outlaws is a boring place, and where I am about to go has no shortage of outlaws.”
Barber may have turned in the story as a piece of fiction, but school officials and law enforcement considered it to be a possible foreshadowing of something much worse.
The story’s reference to a gun kept under a pillow at night was a top priority for the campus officer who initially approached Barber.
“While there, I informed him that we were concerned about his safety because he had made suicidal statements in the paper,” college police Sgt. Randy Wyatt wrote in his report.
“He [Barber] said that he was sorry if he had caused any problems, but that it was just fiction and that none of it was true. I advised him that he had mentioned having a 45 caliber pistol under his pillow in the paper and he stated that this was not true, and if I searched his room, I would find no guns.”
From there, Barber was searched, interrogated and eventually evaluated at Ridgeview Center in Bristol, according to Wyatt’s report.
Campus officers, following a search of his car that Barber grudgingly consented to, report finding a loaded .45-caliber handgun in his front console, a loaded .22-caliber pistol in the change pocket to the front console, and an unloaded 9 mm handgun in the trunk.
“I expected a pretty vocal reaction in our class discussion ... but I never thought I’d be held by the school police,” Barber said.
Time was when you had to be smart to get into college.
This kid’s not SMART enough for Mr. Jefferson’s University.
UVA-Wise, formerly known as Clinch Valley College, is a school near my hometown in Southwest Virginia. Although he probably should have known better to write about that specific subject matter, the whole guns thing is trumped up since he DID have a CCP. What a nightmare!
The fact that he was carrying concealed weapons obviously disqualifies him from having a concealed weapons permit. Excuse me while I try figure out the logic applied here.
He was better off making a career in the Navy.
Honestly, how creative do you have to be to come up with a story like that? You see that crap on the news every night. Now if he wrote about an art show that actually flattered Jesus rather than making him out to be a homo or a candy bar or a democrat crossing the aisle to vote for a Republican, now that’s creative.
Locking him up at all, and especially in a mental hospital is way overboard. On the other hand, it was pretty stupid of the kid to use the professor’s real name in this sort of writing. The fact that the professor is SC Justice Scalia’s son no doubt upped the level of overreaction. Given that the topic of the piece is something that is on the minds of many normal college students these days, and frequently discussed in the media, it’s a perfectly appropriate topic for a creative writing assignment. But nothing would have been lost from a creative standpoint if the student had used another name (and perhaps gender) for the fictional professor and inserted other details to avoid confusion with reality.
I can’t believe somebody this foolish was accepted by UVa. Oh well.
Gee, when your writing professor is the son of a Supreme Court Justice, it might not be too smart to write a story about killing him.
Locking him up at all, and especially in a mental hospital
That means they can take his firearms legally and never give them back, since he was involuntarily committed to a mental institution. That’s why they did it.
...
He ends the story with this thought: “As I read back over this now, I realized that every mistake is brilliance. Rules are for the establishment, and breaking the rules is for the outlaw. And whether you like to admit it now or not, the outlaws shape the history books. A world without outlaws is a boring place, and where I am about to go has no shortage of outlaws.”
I'm shocked that the liberal faculty didn't give him any awards for these gems...some of these could be talking points/living points for the Billary campaign....
UVA-Wise is a feeder school for the larger UVA in Charlottesville. I can tell you some real stories about it and its relationship with the mother university.
Techincally, being ordered “evaluated” is not the same as being “committed”. A committment is a court ordered adjudication specifially stating you are a danger to self/ other or are incompetent to manage your affairs; which disqualifies one for 2A rights. An evaluation does not. This guy is stupid, perhaps but that alone will not likley result in denial of his 2A rights.
This young sailor made the mistake of thinking that free thought was not regulated. For a 23 year old, he does not show too much good judgement. One must always be careful of what you say, write or otherwise communicate-the nanny state is watching/listening.
I agree that he does not show too much creativity by regurgitating the common themes of the recent school shootings. Too bad.
Gotcha. I notice the upper case Grounds. Are you a ‘hoo?
I was UVA/CAS 79.
I need to speed read slower. I missed the Wise bit.
What’s next - locking students up if they show enjoyment from reading the works of Edgar Allan Poe?
I don't think this young man's having a CCP means that officials trumped up anything. He set himself up for the outcome he got when he wrote about a character that matches his own professor's description (at least in terms of his teaching position). Writing in the first person narrative about such a topic was also not the brightest thing to do. All in all, not the sharpest knife in the drawer IMHO.
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