Psyc. screening of foreign university students?

rebornFixer

mammasan wrote:

I don't think the answer is pychological screening but mere observation. I don't know much about this case in VT, a lot of the facts are still missing, but in older cases, like Columbine, the students where exhibiting a lot of anti-social behavior and signs of not really being emotional syable. Had school officials and especially their parents been more aware or observant there is a possibility that the killings could have been prevented.

I don't mean to blame the parents, maybe they just didn't know what signs to look for, but there are definetly signs that a person exhibits before commiting such an irrational act.

Indeed, and if people could become better able to detect signs, maybe this sort of thing would become even more rare?

Another issue ... Is there any validity to the claim that people actually lined up to be shot by this guy?

mammasan

reborncareerist wrote:

Indeed, and if people could become better able to detect signs, maybe this sort of thing would become even more rare?

Another issue ... Is there any validity to the claim that people actually lined up to be shot by this guy?

I've heard that being mentioned in the news but I guess till we get some factual confirmation it's all just speculation.

In many hostage situations the hostages always out number their captures but you hardly hear of them over powering them. I think people tend to listen simply because they believe compliance will lead to their safe release.

farfromglorified

This idea is pretty out there. This would be so ripe for abuse.

dkst0426

Ok, I'm going to call into question several excerpts from the profile of the killer that have been printed so far. Sources are from various reports:

Cho had shown recent signs of violent, aberrant behavior, according to an investigative source, including setting a fire in a dorm room and allegedly stalking some women.

First off, "allegedly stalking some women" doesn't necessarily mean he was.

Now, does it strike anyone else as odd that assertions about Cho's character are made as printed above and right here:

News reports also said that he may have been taking medication for depression, that he was becoming increasingly violent and erratic

But in the same breath (and articles), the following is also said?

"He was very quiet, always by himself," neighbor Abdul Shash said of the gunman. Shash said the gunman spent a lot of his free time playing basketball, and wouldn't respond if someone greeted him.

"He was a loner," said Larry Hincker, a university spokesman, who added that investigators are having some difficulty unearthing information about him.

Students at Harper Hall, the campus dormitory where Cho lived, said they had little interaction with him and no insight into what might have motivated the attack.

Timothy Johnson, a student from Annandale, Va., said people would say hello to Cho in passing, but nobody knew him well.

Is it just me?

Cosmo

It's not tough for anyone to get onto a college campus. I can put on an SC cap and sweatshirt... strap on a back pack and stroll onto the campus of USC and blend in with the crowd. You don't have to be a college student to freak out and shoot up the place.

stuckinline

there were several "red flags"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18148802/?GT1=9246

Authorities ID gunman in Va. Tech rampage
Student’s writings raised red flags before 33 killed; bomb threat found

Virginia Tech
Cho Seung-Hui, who immigrated to the United States at age 8 in 1992, lived in Centreville, Va., a suburb of Washington.
View related photos


MSNBC and NBC News
Updated: 15 minutes ago
BLACKSBURG, Va. - A 23-year-old senior from South Korea whose creative writing was so disturbing that he was referred to the school’s counseling service was behind the massacre of 30 people locked inside a university classroom building in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history, the university said Tuesday.

Ballistics tests found that one of the guns used in that attack was also used in a shooting two hours earlier at a dormitory that left two people dead at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Virginia State Police said. Investigators said in a court filing that they had found a “bomb threat note” near the gunman’s body.

Police identified the shooter as Cho Seung-Hui (pronounced Choh Suhng-whee), of Centreville, Va., who was a senior in the English Department at Virginia Tech. Cho, a resident alien who immigrated to the United States from South Korea in 1992, lived on campus in Harper Residence Hall.

The bloodbath ended with Cho’s suicide, bringing the death toll from two separate shootings — first at the dormitory, then in a classroom building — to 33 and stamping the campus in the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains with unspeakable tragedy.

Note listed gunman’s grievances
Professor Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the university’s English department, said she did not personally know the gunman. But she said she spoke with Lucinda Roy, the department’s director of creative writing, who had Cho in one of her classes and described him as “troubled.”

“There was some concern about him,” Rude told The Associated Press. “Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it’s creative or if they’re describing things, if they’re imagining things or just how real it might be. But we’re all alert to not ignore things ike this.”

She said Cho was referred to the counseling service, but she said she did not know when or what the outcome was. Rude refused to release any of his writings or his grades, citing privacy laws.

NBC News’ Pete Williams reported that police had found a note in which Cho listed “random grievances,” but few other details were immediately available. That seemed in keeping for a young man who apparently left little impression in the Virginia Tech community.

Cho’s fellow residents of Harper Hall said few people knew the gunman, who kept to himself.

“He can’t have been an outgoing kind of person,” Meredith Daly, 19, of Danville, Va., told MSNBC.com’s Bill Dedman.

Stephen Scott, a freshman engineering student from Marlton, N.J., said police and FBI agents went through the dorm Monday night showing a picture of Cho and trying to find anybody who recognized or knew him. He did not know whether they were successful.

‘Very quiet, always by himself’
In Centreville, a suburb of Washington where Cho’s family lived in an off-white, two-story townhouse, people who knew Cho concurred that he kept to himself.

“He was very quiet, always by himself,” said Abdul Shash, a neighbor. Shash said Cho spent a lot of his free time playing basketball and would not respond if someone greeted him. He described the family as quiet.

Rod Wells, a postal worker, said that characterization of Cho did not fit the man’s parents, who, he described as “always polite, always kind to me, very quiet, always smiling. Just sweet, sweet people.”

“I talk to particularly everybody here,” Wells told NBC News. “So I guess nobody had any intimation that he was like that. I don’t think the parents did, because they were quite the opposite.”

LikeAnOcean

Thats a nice theory and all, but what if you give them the test, they fail, and come back with a gun because they failed?.. you can't solve the worlds problems with a test.

rebornFixer

If you take all this at face value, this kid fits the "classic" school shooter profile to a tee, except for being Asian.

However, hindsight bias is huge in these cases ... This shit happens, and suddenly people think back and come up with as many deviant behaviors as they can ... It isn't necessarily 100% accurate, but on the other hand, of course someone who does this is mentally ill in some sense of the word.

rebornFixer

LikeAnOcean wrote:

Thats a nice theory and all, but what if you give them the test, they fail, and come back with a gun because they failed?.. you can't solve the worlds problems with a test.

Indeed not, but I think we need some better way of detecting these people. Problem is, school shootings are extremely low base rate and you'd certainly overpredict.

Fuck. I am still just so disgusted by the whole thing. Something effective needs to happen ... And that something is changing the way our culture glorifies violence.
Not gonna happen, I fear ...

Cosmo

reborncareerist wrote:

Indeed not, but I think we need some better way of detecting these people. Problem is, school shootings are extremely low base rate and you'd certainly overpredict.

Fuck. I am still just so disgusted by the whole thing. Something effective needs to happen ... And that something is changing the way our culture glorifies violence.
Not gonna happen, I fear ...

...
You ready to vomit?
http://www.columbinegame.com
Talk about glorifying violence and the definition of 'Bad taste'...

rebornFixer

Cosmo wrote:

...
You ready to vomit?
http://www.columbinegame.com
Talk about glorifying violence and the definition of 'Bad taste'...

People are just fucking indecent sometimes. truly.

By the way, if anyone cares, my initial thinking about this guy was that he had a psychotic depression. Sounds like I was right, based on what info we have thus far. This sort of thing CAN be diagnosed early, and in this guy's case, it was ... He was in a psyc. ward and deemed "dangerous to others". Then they freaking just let him out to go to school.