People don't think logically in a time like this. Some Asian students began to worry about reprisal? Not likely but then it wasn't likely that a fellow student would shoot 32 other people in cold blood. While I wish they hadn't felt at risk, I'm hardly going to condemn them for not thinking completely logically...if indeed their concerns were illogical. One thing I've learned is that a lot of racism aimed at minorities is below the radar of the average white middle-class person (i.e. me).

Having said that, I teach at a college not so very far from Tech and a lot of students had friends at Tech. On Monday they were frantically emailing, texting and calling all day; today we were all very somber. At no time did the gunman's ethnicity ever come up in discussion that I know of, and I talked to a lot of students in passing and in class. I think the anxiety felt by some Asian students will be transient. I'm sort of surprised that it was enough to warrant an article. I have a student working with me of Vietnamese descent whose sister is a Tech student (unharmed). I'll have to ask her what she thinks.

Point taken, anon. I think you're talking more about paranoid schizophrenia whereas I'm talking more about mental illness in general. You are correct that untreated paranoid schizophrenics have a disproportionally percent of certain crimes, but if you focus on how many schizophrenics are dangerous, the situation is a little different (it's a little like my stat prof's favorite example: Most heroin users have used marijuana, making people think marijuana is a gateway drug. But the vast majority of marijuana users don't go on to heroin, so the "gateway" idea isn't as well supported as people think). However, I would differ in that I think laypeople are fairly anxious about schizophrenics rather than complacent. I'm in a relatively rural part of Virginia and thus my "laypeople" could be very different from yours.

As far as fighting a mental illness, I think most mental illnesses...depression, OCD, phobias, and so on...feature insight at least some of the time. The depressed person knows she's depressed and may well fight it. If we are specifically referring to schizophrenia, then the insight is much less likely. A person in a psychotic state either doesn't know he/she's ill or in some cases can't tell what's illness and what's reality. In that case, the fighting analogy doesn't work as well.

In this case, apparently at least one professor DID want him assessed by a psychiatrist or psychologist but clearly she could not compel him to seek counseling. Basically, you or I or this guy's classmates and professors can see that he's likely to be dangerous but as the law is written, he cannot be made to seek counseling unless he makes a threat to others or himself.

I am very interested in this dilemma as I am grappling with a situation at my own college that is much less disturbing but troubling. It involves a student from an earlier semester who had been stabilized on medication but began to experience a psychotic break. She left but wants to return and for some reason really wants to take one of my classes. I'm not thrilled about the idea for various reasons and neither is the school, but again legally there is not much we can do. I

Treating her like everyone else is my plan. I am so hoping the meds work for her and she sticks to them. She's a pleasant young woman when she's stable.

I didn't mean to communicate that the student is violent or threatening. She's different from the student Domini describes (wow, what an experience)! During her deterioration she elicited not fear but pity and a lot of frustration. For instance, she would tell us of terrible things that had happened to her or a relative that on examination were not possible. For instance, she called me to tell me that the day before, her sister pulled someone out of a car on fire somewhere in our county. That would have been all over the news but there was no mention of it. She failed most of her tests and hated science, but wanted to be a doctor. There was not the anger or animosity shown by Cho Seung-hui, so she was more of a headache for the faculty and we were genuinely concerned for her future. But we could not force her to leave or commit her under the circumstances (we persuaded her to withdraw to work on her issues without ruining her GPA). I have no grounds to block her from my class until she appears to pose a threat or disrupts the class. Right now I just hope she holds it together.

Nothing has topped the male student who walked in my office, closed the door and looked at me...for several seconds I mentally calculated what I'd have to do to take him down should he attack me..and told me he was actively suicidal. Luckily he agreed for me to walk him over to student counseling, he returned to class later in the week and graduated a couple of years later.

Virginia Tech is a state university, not a private university.

I agree completely.