State commission to conduct thorough shooting investigation
April 18, 2007 12:00 am
The Associated Press
WFLS News

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Virginia makes it tougher than almost all other states to force treatment on a person showing signs of mental instability.
Mental health experts say that distinction is sure to be fiercely debated in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre. Court records and interviews have revealed a portrait of a deeply disburbed gunman who had brushes with the mental health system.

State law allows involuntary commitment only if a person is determined to pose an "imminent danger" to himself or others or is "substantially unable to care for himself."

The nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington says only four other states have a similarly restrictive standard. Other states' laws don't use the word "imminent" in conjunction with danger or harm, making it easier to force treatment.

Colonel Gerald Massengill will head a state investigation into the handling of the shootings. The former state police superintendent says he expects the review will cover mental health issues as well as law enforcement response.

Also, a commission appointed by Supreme Court Chief Justice LeRoy Hassell already is studying mental health laws -- including the imminent danger standard. Members of the commission say the Tech shootings will intensify that debate.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Virginia governor names massacre panel
Agence France Press, 19/04/2007 22h06

Mannie Garcia BLACKSBURG, United States (AFP) - Virginia's governor named an independent panel on Thursday to look into the massacre at a state university as school officials defended their handling of the troubled student.

Governor Tim Kaine's announcement came as Virginia Tech University officials were peppered with questions over whether a student with a history of mental problems and stalking women should have been allowed to remain in school.

Cho Seung-Hui, 23, a Virginia Tech senior whose family moved to the United States from South Korea when he was eight years old, went on the rampage here Monday mowing down 32 teachers and students with two recently bought handguns.

In a video diatribe sent to a US television network, a clearly unbalanced Cho brandished the murder weapons, painted himself as a long-suffering martyr and compared himself to Jesus Christ.

Kaine said the review panel would be headed by Gerald Massengill, a former Virginia police chief, and would include Tom Ridge, a former head of the US Department of Homeland Security.

A 20-year veteran of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a senior state education official and a psychiatrist were also named to the body.

Kaine said they would seek to discover, "First, everything we know about the young man who was the perpetrator.

"What was his interaction with the mental health system? What kind of treatment did he receive or did he not receive? What were the warning signs? Who was warned? What was done?

"Second, we need to find out all of the circumstances surrounding the shooting, those hours on Monday morning from the first incident until the individual committed suicide.

Kim Jae-Hwan"And third, we need to delve into all the circumstances surrounding the response -- the law enforcement response, the emergency medical response," he said.

Shortly before Kaine's announcement, Virginia Tech vice president Ed Spencer cautioned against trying to affix blame. "I think about the seductive temptation to blame and I hope that none of us get into that," he said.

Cho has been described as a sullen loner by students, teachers and his roommates and his violent writings and intimidating manner raised alarm bells among some of his professors long before the attacks.

Cho was committed to a mental institution in December 2005 after one of two stalking incidents involving female students but was released the next day for outpatient treatment after he was deemed not to be a danger to others.

Dr. Chris Flynn of the university counseling center said the decision to commit Cho to a mental health facility was taken by a Virginia district court and there are strict privacy rules about what information can be shared.

Mannie Garcia"Clearly every person who leaves a psychiatric facility needs extended care and follow-up," he added. "Who gets notified under that court order and who is notified is determined by (health privacy) regulations and not the university.

"The university is not part of the mental health system for the judiciary system and we would not be the providers of mandatory counseling in this instance," he said.

Police superintendent Colonel Steve Flaherty told reporters, meanwhile, the chilling manifesto sent by Cho to NBC News had been of only "marginal value" to the investigation.

"We had hoped that the correspondence that we received from NBC would contain some vital evidence and be of very significant value," he said.

"While there was some marginal value to the package we received, the fact of the matter is we already had most all of this information," he said.

Mannie GarciaFlaherty said he could not confirm that Cho personally mailed the package to NBC on Monday saying it was busy in the post office that morning as it was the deadline for Americans to file their income taxes.

The package was postmarked 9:01 am, one hour and 45 minutes after the first two victims were killed in a campus dormitory and about 30 to 40 minutes before the second attack during which 30 people died and Cho committed suicide.

Flaherty thanked NBC for its cooperation with the authorities but lamented that the network chose to air excerpts from the manifesto, which contained 27 short videos, 43 photographs and an 1,800-word document.

"We're rather disappointed in the editorial decision to broadcast these disturbing images," he said. "I'm sorry that you all were exposed to these images."

Suhail Samaha, a cousin of Reema Samaha, one of the victims, said he "would have rather not seen it." "It just didn't serve any purpose except to make me angry," he said.

NBC defended its decision to release video from Cho's manifesto.

"We believe it provides some answers to the critical question, 'why did this man carry out these awful murders?'" NBC said in a statement.

"We have covered this story -- and our unique role in it -- with extreme sensitivity, underscored by our devoted efforts to remember and honor the victims and heroes of this tragic incident."

Concealed Handgun Legislation

Gunman had past problems with police, mental health: police
Reuters; Wed Apr 18, 2007
LINK

BLACKSBURG, Virginia (Reuters) - The gunman in the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech had been in contact with campus police in late 2005 after complaints from women students he was annoying them, and was sent to a mental health facility because of worries he was suicidal, police said on Wednesday.

Police were giving more details about the gunman they identified on Tuesday as responsible for Monday's shooting. Cho Seung-Hui killed 32 people and then himself in the worst shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.

April 19, 2007
Laws Limit Options When a Student Is Mentally Ill
By TAMAR LEWIN
Federal privacy and antidiscrimination laws restrict how universities can deal with students who have mental health problems.

For the most part, universities cannot tell parents about their children’s problems without the student’s consent. They cannot release any information in a student’s medical record without consent. And they cannot put students on involuntary medical leave, just because they develop a serious mental illness.

Nor is knowing when to worry about student behavior, and what action to take, always so clear.

“They can’t really kick someone out because they’re writing papers about weird topics, even if they seem withdrawn and hostile,” said Dr. Richard Kadison, chief of mental health services at Harvard University. “Most state laws are pretty clear: you can only bring students to hospitals if there is imminent risk to themselves or someone else, so universities are in a bit of a bind that way.”

But, he said, some schools do mandate limited amounts of treatment in certain circumstances.

“At the University of Missouri, if someone makes a suicide attempt, they mandate four counseling sessions, for example,” said Dr. Kadison, an author of “College of the Overwhelmed: The Campus Mental Health Crisis and What To Do About It.”

Universities can find themselves in a double bind. On the one hand, they may be liable if they fail to prevent a suicide or murder. After the death in 2000 of Elizabeth H. Shin, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who had written several suicide notes and used the university counseling service before setting herself on fire, the Massachusetts Superior Court allowed her parents, who had not been told of her deterioration, to sue administrators for $27.7 million. The case was settled for an undisclosed amount.

On the other hand, universities may be held liable if they do take action to remove a potentially suicidal student. In August, the City University of New York agreed to pay $65,000 to a student who sued after being barred from her dormitory room at Hunter College because she was hospitalized after a suicide attempt.

Also last year, George Washington University reached a confidential settlement in a case charging that it had violated antidiscrimination laws by suspending Jordan Nott, a student who had sought hospitalization for depression.

“This is a very, very difficult and gray area, when you take action to remove the student from the campus environment, versus when you encourage the student to use the resources available on campus,” said Ada Meloy, director of legal and regulatory affairs at the American Council on Education. “In an emergency, you can share certain information, but it’s not clear what’s an emergency.”

Ms. Meloy estimated that situations complicated enough to involve a university’s lawyers arise, on average, about twice a semester at large universities.

While shootings like the one at Virginia Tech are extremely rare, suicides, threats and serious mental-health problems are not. Last year, the American College Health Association’s National College Health Assessment, covering nearly 95,000 students at 117 campuses, found that 9 percent of students had seriously considered suicide in the previous year, and 1 in 100 had attempted it.

So mental health experts emphasize that, whatever a college’s concerns about liability, the goal of campus policies should be to maximize the likelihood that those who need mental-health treatment will get it.

“What we really need to do is encourage students to seek mental health treatment if they need it, to remove any barriers to their getting help, destigmatize it, and make it safe, so they know there won’t be negative consequences,” said Karen Bower, a lawyer at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law in Washington, who represented Mr. Nott.

With the Virginia Tech killings, many universities are planning to remind faculty members of their protocols. “We’re actually going to go ahead and have the counseling service here do a session for all our instructors and faculty on what to look for, what the procedures are, and what the counseling center can do,” said Shannon Miller, chairwoman of the English department at Temple University.

At Harvard, Dr. Kadison said, dormitory resident assistants watch for signs of trouble, and are usually the first to become aware of worrisome behavior — and to call a dean.

“The dean might insist that they get an evaluation to make sure they’re healthy enough to live in a dorm,” he said. “If it’s not thought that they’re in any immediate danger, they can take or not take the recommendation.”

Last month, Virginia passed a law, the first in the nation, prohibiting public colleges and universities from expelling or punishing students solely for attempting suicide or seeking mental-health treatment for suicidal thoughts.

“In one sense, the new law doesn’t cover new territory, because discrimination against people with mental health problems is already prohibited,” said Dana L. Fleming, a lawyer in Manchester, N.H., who is an expert on education law. “But in another sense, it’s ground-breaking since it’s the first time we’ve seen states focus on student suicides and come up with some code of conduct for schools.”

College counseling services nationwide are seeing more use.

“We’re seeing more students in our service consistently every year,” said Alejandro Martinez, director for counseling and psychological services at Stanford University, which sees about 10 percent of the student body each year. “Certainly more students are experiencing mental illness, including depression.

“But there’s also been a cultural shift,” Mr. Martinez said, “in that more students are willing to get help.”

College officials say that a growing number of students arrive on campus with a history of mental-health problems and a prescription for psychotropic drugs. But screening for such problems would be illegal, admissions officers say.

“We’re restricted by the disabilities act from asking,” said Rick Shaw, Stanford’s admissions director. “We do ask a question, as most institutions do, about whether a student has been suspended or expelled from school, and if they have been, we ask them to write an explanation of it.”

Federal laws also restrict what universities can reveal. Generally, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, Ferpa, passed in 1974, makes it illegal to disclose a student’s records to family members without the student’s authorization.

“Colleges can disclose a student’s private records if they believe there’s a health and safety emergency, but that health and safety exception hasn’t been much tested in the courts, so it’s left to be figured out case by case,” Ms. Fleming said.

And the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act prohibits the release of medical records. “The interaction of all these laws does not make things easy,” she said.

Gun control faces uphill struggle in Congress
Wed Apr 18, 2007 7:00PM EDT
By Thomas Ferraro and Richard Cowan
LINK

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The massacre at Virginia Tech has ignited fresh talk in the Democratic-led U.S. Congress about tightening America's gun laws but it is doubtful enough lawmakers will tackle the politically charged issue.

With so many Americans in love with their guns and defensive of their right under the Constitution to keep and bear arms, politicians are reluctant to take on gun owners or the powerful gun lobby.

"It'd be foolish politically for Democrats to do it," said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia. "There's little chance of anything meaningful."

Guns are an integral part of America's often-violent culture. Americans are among the world's most heavily armed people, and the country has among the highest murder rates.

There are an estimated 250 million privately owned guns in the United States, which has a population of about 300 million. About 30,000 people a year die from gun wounds, about evenly split between murders and suicides.

Polls show Americans favor tougher gun laws. But gun-rights groups have helped stop such action by rallying their members, many of them hunters, against it.

Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America said the shootings that left 33 people dead, including the assailant, at Virginia Tech on Monday showed gun bans are the problem, not the solution.

"Isn't it interesting that Utah and Oregon are the only two states that allow faculty to carry guns. And isn't it interesting that you haven't read about any school or university shootings in Utah and Oregon," Pratt said.

Gun lobbies have helped defeat Democratic candidates pushing gun control.

In 1994, after a Democratic Congress imposed a ban on assault weapons, Republicans won control of the legislature, capturing the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. As a result, many Democrats have backed off in recent years.

STRICTER LAWS NOT PROMISED

Democrats regained control of Congress in last year's elections with many campaign promises, but none were for stricter gun laws.

Some Democrats even ran on a gun-rights platform.

Regardless, shortly after shots rang out at Virginia Tech, Democratic gun-control advocates called for action.

"I believe this will reignite the dormant effort to pass common-sense gun regulations," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat.

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat, said, "The unfortunate situation in Virginia could have been avoided if congressional leaders stood up to the gun lobby."

The House of Representatives Education and Labor Committee announced it would hold a hearing on college campus safety next week. "We must start now to learn what we can do to prevent things like this from happening in the future," said Committee Chairman George Miller, a California Democrat.

A number of gun-control bills have been offered in this Congress but none have gotten very far. They include measures to expand background checks, reduce the number of bullets allowed in an ammunition clip and reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004.

"I'm skeptical," said Rep. Marion Berry, a moderate Arkansas Democrat. Liberal Connecticut Democrat Rep. Rosa DeLauro said: "I suspect there isn't much appetite" for it.

Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence voiced hope, however, that the Virginia Tech tragedy would force lawmakers to answer tough questions and take tough action.

Helmke said, "People are again asking: 'What are we doing about gun violence? Why is it so easy to get a weapon? Why does this keep happening in our country?'"

But Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said, "I hope there's not a rush to do anything. We need to take a deep breath."

(Additional reporting by Donna Smith and Kevin Drawbaugh)

March 28, 2007
On Education
Trying to Disarm the Dangerous World That Students Live In
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN, NY TIMES
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla.

During the spring of his sophomore year in high school here, Jeffrey Johnson took the standardized tests that Florida requires for promotion and graduation. He scored in the 93rd percentile in reading and the 95th in math. That same semester, he earned straight A’s.

Two years later, in May 2006, Jeffrey was about to graduate summa cum laude, having received a full college scholarship. Days before commencement, at the age of 17, he was shot to death at a party during an argument about his car. His graduation mortarboard was found near his body.

For Paul Moore, who had taught Jeffrey in an advanced social studies class at Miami Carol City Senior High School, a terrible question began to emerge. It all turned on the concept on accountability. Jeffrey had proved accountable to the state by passing the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. But what about the accountability the state had to keep Jeffrey alive?

Jeffrey was the third Carol City student shot to death during the 2005-6 academic year. By the first semester of this year, two more had been killed in gun violence. It was then that Mr. Moore decided to do something more than deliver eulogies, visit weeping parents and initiate class discussions about all the senseless death.

He drafted a petition, expressing his righteous anger. (“Anger” indeed was the word, for it derives from the Norse “angr,” which means grief at the wrongness in the world.) The petition appealed to the newly elected governor, Charlie Crist, to “make Florida’s schools and the communities around them ‘measurably’ safer” and it concluded, “You are accountable to us for it!”

In the past month, several thousand people have signed the petition. It is not being forwarded, in the modern way, on the Internet. Instead, volunteers take paper versions into classes, churches, offices; a copy even turned up among some teachers in Chicago. Mr. Moore’s words have reached to the heart of something.

“I see these kids as the canary in the coal mine,” said Mr. Moore, 53. “They’re the first to go. But ultimately all our lives are in danger. I know there are personal failures here, but you have to give children a chance to live long enough to make moral choices. The Preamble of the Constitution says the government must guarantee the general welfare. They’ve failed. They’ve failed. These children shouldn’t be dying.”

Standing a bony 6-foot-5, craggy face creased and lined, Mr. Moore cuts the figure of an Old Testament prophet improbably dropped amid the pastel bungalows and strip malls. The easy temptation is to conceive of his petition as merely a symbolic admonition.

Yet his life has been filled with concrete works — union organizing, lobbying in the State Legislature, coaching sports — and his criticism of the state government involves specific matters of public policy. He wants Florida to toughen its gun laws.

Jeffrey Johnson was shot with a Tec-9 semiautomatic, a weapon that it had been illegal to manufacture for a decade under the federal assault-weapons ban. Congress let the ban expire in September 2004. For its part, Florida has no state restriction on the sale or possession of such arms and is unlikely to pass one.

It was one of the first states in the nation to adopt a law allowing individuals to carry concealed handguns, and two years ago it enacted what is known as the “Stand Your Ground” law, permitting a person to preemptively “use deadly force” against any perceived threat of attack.

Governor Crist’s press secretary, Erin Isaac, who was asked for comment last week, did not respond. The governor was endorsed in both the primary and the general election by the National Rifle Association.

As a result of its current policies, Florida has received a rating of F-plus from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, an advocacy group. That grade puts Florida in the bottom 10 of the 50 states.

Grades, of course, can cut other ways. Carol City High School has a D from Florida’s education department, based partly on its test scores. Only 9 percent of its sophomores scored at grade level or better on reading last year and a third did so in math.

What a test cannot quantify is the experience of an educator like Mr. Moore, who teaches most of his courses in the auditorium, where as many as four separate classes meet in simultaneous cacophony. Nor can a statistic grasp the pervasive fatalism, even nihilism, of his students, who have seen so many of their peers killed.

AS if to underscore a lesson in the irrelevance of achievement, Jeffrey Johnson and several other victims have been among the most visible academic stars. He was a member of the National Honor Society, a participant in a prelaw program, a volunteer in a congressman’s office. He quit the basketball team, despite being captain, to have more time to study.

Now he is remembered on memorial T-shirts, a grim fashion statement. Mr. Moore recently learned from his students of another popular trend — young partygoers posing for snapshots while brandishing their favorite firearms. And when Mr. Moore recently asked his economics class the seemingly innocuous question of why CD sales for rap music have been falling, a boy named Charles answered, “All the young people that would buy it are getting killed.”

Mr. Moore pursued the point, asking Charles if the death toll bothered him. “You just have to move on,” the teenager replied. “Can’t bring them back. You can’t take them with you. Nothing you can do about it.”

The words echoed in Mr. Moore’s head as he made several visits with his petition. He sat during a free period with Deirdre Anderson, the high school’s library specialist; her son James, a student at a different high school, was shot dead with an AK-47 last spring. After school two days later, Mr. Moore drove to visit with Jeffrey Johnson’s father, who is also named Jeffrey.
Samuel G. Freedman is a professor of journalism at Columbia University. His e-mail address is sgfreedman@nytimes.com.
“If you go to school for 12 years and can’t pass that test,” Mr. Johnson said, “then all you were doing is attending. So if the state can put all this pressure on the students and the parents, then why can’t the parents put the pressure back on the state? I don’t want nothing to happen to nobody else’s kid.”