The piece is superbly reported and really captures the issue well. Because the students are apprentices, sometimes they can miss badly in attempts to write some kind of hard-boiled or noir or gothic work and produce instead dreck that is nothing but violence.

Still, there is something remarkably creepy about the two one-act plays of Cho's, that go beyond anything I've seen in suggesting both a level of rage combined with a complete lack of literary merit. There's no sense at all of a creative plan or impulse in either work. And the teachers that were forced to instruct Cho -- Falco and Giovanni -- are highly respected veterans. If they thought it was out of line, it was. Creative writing teachers might not be psychologists, but it's really not that difficult to identify work that is really sick, if it's like what Cho wrote. There are much harder "fine-line" cases, but Cho's wasn't one of them.

I'm also an administrator and have long been concerned about the university's legal powerlessness to take action against and on behalf of students we know are dangerous to themselves and others. Something has to change.

I love what the teacher said. "This is for shock value, it has not artistic merit." I remember in creative writing classes there was always one person who thought they could up the ante and terrorize the other students with their brilliant bloody, or sexy brush strokes. It always hurt cause it seemed so hallow, such a waste of time. I think when a teacher called a student out on their desire for attention, it always humbled the person, it took away their fire…and sometimes encouraged them to be apart of the writer’s community and the unique (and sometimes safe) space created by creative writing classes.

I just hope the general population doesn't take out their misunderstanding of the writing process and the cathartic, expressive and often therapeutic nature out on creative writing. It's a haunting and unfamiliar place for most people...the ability to control and shape your destiny, or the destiny of others in writing.

The saddest thing is that the masses could consider this a dangerous art form now...yet each person creates worlds far more horrific each night in their sleep.

(After reading this article, it seems like the teachers really did do an amazing job of highlighting and channeling this student into the proper channels that could deal, and/or assess such a mental state. It's sad that the system simply labeled someone and let him or her back into the stream. Hmmm...I hate the blame game, yet is is mysterious that someone who lives so far inside hate and struggles with rage would be allowed to buy a gun....we shall see how this unfolds."

at the thought of scrutinizing any creative writing (however shocking, or badly written) for clear links to a person's state of mental health. There are countless people who make a living writing and filming truly gruesome stuff. If we labeled every writer of violence and horror as in need of counseling, bookstores and cineplexes would be a lot smaller. Violence (really icky, grusome violence) has been a part of creative expression since we started writing (cutting up children and serving them in a stewto their dad? Read the Orestia cycle. Behold the stanzas of slaughter in the Iliad, which enumerates the dozens of ways a man can meet the business end of a spear.) Unless a student is writing clear threats to a teacher or student in the guise of "creative" writing, I think it's best to judge the wok on its artistic merits (or lack therof).

I think a far more obvious clue to this man's mental state was the series of complaints filed against him by real women who felt they were being thrreatened in reality. I am disturbed, and saddened, that there was no consistent follow-up on this clear warning signal. This is the written record that demanded attention, and didn't receive its due.

Brett Easton Ellis' "American Psycho" happens to be one of my favorite books. In the novel (which is infinitely more graphic than the film), Ellis methodically describes things such as dismembering women with chainsaws and inserting a rat into a woman's vagina, which then proceeds to eat her slowly from the inside.

Takashi Miike, one of Japan's most acclaimed filmmakers, has made films such as Ichi the Killer, the unrated version of which shows a woman's nipples being sliced off as she's being interrogated, and Audition, where a woman keeps a man she has dismembered and disfigured as a prisoner in a burlap sack.

Either of these is infinitely more disturbing than anything that the uncreative Cho could have thought up. In fact, it may have been precisely for his lack of creativity in fiction that he finally turned to reality as an attempt to actualize the scenes that he wanted to create but lacked the literary talent to.

But I digress. I will be the first to agree that there is a clear difference between great works that are disturbing and Cho's juvenile lashing out. Given that even the most prominent critics often fail to grasp the talent of artists such as Ellis or Miike until they are proven wrong years later, I do not trust the run-of-the-mill English professor to make the proper distinctions. English professors are, perhaps, better suited to do so than anyone else, but I shudder at the thought of some recently degreed assistant professor at some mediocre school in the Midwest being given such power over students' creativity. And you fail to consider the fact that once professors start doing it, K-12 teachers will be under even more pressure to do so. There are far too many people out there who will interpret any mention of sex or violence as a warning sign, and pretty soon, the only acceptable creative writing will be lame coming-of-age stories or stories about your family or 'the ___-American experience'.

I know there will be plenty of conservatives who will put scare quotes around the word 'creativity' and use this as another tactic to smear liberals for coddling criminals. Of course, these are the same people who couldn't care less about the Arts or any culture outside of NASCAR and country music. But anyone who takes seriously the idea of academia and literary/artistic culture as the last bastion of civilization in a world of media hysteria, reductive soundbytes, and reactionary politics, should seriously consider the consequences of trying to implement something like this.