Posted by Cockney Robin | The Washington Post reports that the Virginia Tech shooter---who on 16 April 2007 became the murderer of 32 people--- suffered from a severe anxiety disorder called "selective mutism."(The Washington Post) While in high school, he was surrounded by a "cocoon" of support in coping with his disability.
The disorder made Cho unable to speak in social settings and was deemed an emotional disability, the sources said. When he stopped getting the help that Fairfax was providing, Cho became even more isolated and suffered severe ridicule during his four years at Virginia Tech, experts suggested. In his senior year, Cho killed 32 students and faculty members and himself in the deadliest shooting by an individual in U.S. history. (The Washington Post)
Virginia Tech wasn't informed of his disability; so when he started showing up in classes and couldn't reply to his teachers, they would become angry and his classmates would taunt him. (The Washington Post)
"Think of the image of the little kid at the end of the diving board, just frozen. They can't move no matter how much we tell them to jump," said Robert Schum, a clinical psychologist and expert in selective mutism. "In a classroom, they feel threatened. They're trapped. And the more people push, the more it exacerbates the anxiety."(The Washington Post)
I'm not in the least interested in arguing whether the above constitutes an excuse or even a plea in mitigation or in arguing about good and evil; I'll leave that to the people who understand these things and to the ones who enjoy throwing stones in their own glass houses. What chiefly concerns me---did I mention I am a Brit?---is that an angry, troubled adolescent (or barely post-adolescent) was able to get his hands on an automatic weapon when he reached the breaking point.
But that's not what the Washington Post article is about. I'm not fully sure I understand what it's actually trying to say, to be honest. When I was growing up, British people weren't taught that the right response to every ghastly, inexplicable event is to dissect every aspect in order to work out how to apportion and allocate blame. That seems to be changing now, but I'm really too old to learn. Besides, I'm not convinced that "processing" events such as the Virginia Tech shootings accomplishes anything at all, even the highly desirable objective of preventing similar events in the future. It seems to me that no matter how or where the system failed Cho and the people he murdered, the real reason they're all dead now is that he was able to get his hands on that gun.
The Washington Post seems to suggest that part of the blame falls on a system that goes too far in protecting the confidentiality of student records.
Professors and school administrators at Virginia Tech could not have known of Cho's emotional disability -- Fairfax officials were forbidden from telling them. Federal privacy and disability laws prohibit high schools from sharing with colleges private information such as a student's special education coding or disability, according to high school and college guidance and admissions officials. Those laws also prohibit colleges from asking for such information.
The only way Virginia Tech officials would have known about Cho's anxiety and selective mutism would have been if Cho or his parents told them about it and asked for accommodations to help him, as he had received in Fairfax. Cho's disability was first reported in the Wall Street Journal and will be explored further when a panel appointed by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) releases an investigative report about the shootings.
Although the only way college officials could have known about Cho's problem would have been from Cho, experts said that asking for help is an almost impossible task for someone with selective mutism....Cho's parents, although cooperative with Fairfax school officials, might not have fully understood what was wrong and that their son needed help in college as well. As recently as last summer, Cho's mother had sought out members of One Mind Church in Woodbridge to purge him of what the pastor there called the "demonic power" possessing him....
We don't send anything that has to do with special education," [Richard Crowley, coordinator of guidance services for Fairfax, Virginia] said. "If the parent, who has the authority, wants us to disclose to colleges that the student was in a special-ed program, we can do that and send whatever records they want. But that doesn't happen very often."
The reason, explained Barmak Nassirian, with the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, is that in the competitive admissions process, students don't want to be at a disadvantage. As recently as 2003, parental pressure caused the College Board to stop flagging SAT scores for students who had been given special education accommodations while taking the test.
[M]any colleges say they don't want to know because of the potential liability. "In soliciting a student's history of psychiatric treatment or diagnoses by treating physicians, you basically open a Pandora's box," Nassirian said. "Even if you should decide, for reasons that have nothing to do with medical circumstances, not to accept a student, you most certainly will have a case that will be litigated."(The Washington Post).
In other words, if his high school had not been required by law to keep what it knew about his severe mental problems to itself, he might not have ended up at Virginia Tech in the first place. While that's true, the cause of the massacre was still the gun; if he was that severely impaired, what are the odds that he wouldn't have suffered the same treatment (and the same insane reponse to it) elsewhere? In which case, a different set of people from these would now be dead (The Washington Post).
I don''t know the answer to the questions about how institutions should handle the records of people with severe mental disabilities. I also don't know what you do about the tendency of young people to persecute those who don't conform. The WaPo article contains a horrid account of Cho being bullied by a teacher and his fellow students while still in high school.
By the time Cho entered Westfield High School in Chantilly, classmate Chris Davids remembers an uncomfortable sophomore English class. Students were taking turns reading aloud from works of Shakespeare. When it was Cho's turn, he sat in silence. The teacher began to cajole him. Silence. Students began to snicker. The teacher became angry. Silence. She threatened him with an F. Finally, Cho began to read in a strange mumble.
"That snickering turned to full-out laughing," Davids said. "There were several comments made, such as 'Go Back to ESL' -- English as a Second Language class -- 'Learn how to read,' or 'Go back to China.' "(The Washington Post)
If people haven't learned from Columbine about the potential consequences of bullying American misfits, when will they learn? And when they will they begin to teach their children that such bullying is not only unkind but dangerous?
But that's not why the people at Virginia Tech are dead, of course. Whatever went into the making of this killer, the reason he was able to kill was that he was able---with all his defects of mental stability, character, reason, personality, soul or whatever you want to call it---to get his hands on that gun.
LINKS:
BACKSTORY BY CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR DAMOZEL AT VERSUS/REVERSUS
- First we Need to Control the Gun Control Debate
- David Maraniss at The Washington Post: This is What Happened.
- Quote of the Day for 20 April 2007. Podhoretz at NRO: Neutralizing the Derbyshire Effect.
- A Few Green Leaves in the Middle of the Wasteland
- Quote of the Day for Monday, 16 April 2007. The President Extends his Support; his Spokeswoman Explains his Policy.
- 16 April 2007. A Bad, Sad, Terrible Day.
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