Interestingly enough, a website is claiming that the gunman may have suffered from Obsessive Ex Syndrome. Not enough information to confirm, but the theory, seems to be relatively new (at least I haven't heard of it before and I like to stay abreast of current trends in psychology) So, without further ado, check it out...

http://www.obsessive-ex.com/oex/index.html

Giovanna wrote:

Okay, who the fuck let this guy into any college at all for ENGLISH. He sucks at writing and speaking and sounding remotely like someone who should be in school for English.

He was an English LIT major.  You don't need to be able to write to study lit.

As for the obsessive ex thing -- the guy had no social skills, no ability to make eye contact, and no ability to communicate or connect with other people: the man had probably never had a girlfriend.  He'd been stalking women for at least a couple of years, taking inappropriate photos of women under his desk.  The roommate of the first woman to be shot (in the dorm) said that she'd never known or even seen the guy, and she was relatively certain that her roommate didn't know him either (he was a senior, they were frosh, at an enormous school in a different dorm).

Some media outlets are blaming that first woman, Emily Hilscher, for the subsequent shootings, which is just insane.  Even if she HAD known the guy, even if she HAD rebuffed him for some reason, it's not her fault that he shot her, much less her RA and 30 other people.

The guy was psychotic, badly in need of Haldol/Zyprexa/whatever and a long time under close watch in a hospital.  It's as simple as that.

In my opinion... the only way to stop the cycle of violence is if someone is brave enough to take on all the hate and the abuse without fighting back, and that person has to show that he/she sincerely forgives those people and is able to take any shit they throw on him/her. And when that person dies from the abuse, that's how people will see the horror of their actions and stop it.
Either that, or people will continue being dumb and keep bullying other people. It's hard to say how one should stop violence. I mean, there's Martin Luther King, and then there's Malcolm X...
Lots of people are gonna be against my idea of how to stop violence, but I do think it has a shot because it takes courage to take arms and fight back as well as to turn hate to forgiveness.

Last edited by Hiraku (04-20-2007 02:54:31 PM)

I read on Yahoo news that the shooter's family issued an official apology. I'm most likely in the minority, but I don't think that was neccessary. They didn't do anything and therefore have nothing to apologize for.

tohubohu wrote:

Giovanna wrote:

Okay, who the fuck let this guy into any college at all for ENGLISH. He sucks at writing and speaking and sounding remotely like someone who should be in school for English.

He was an English LIT major.  You don't need to be able to write to study lit.

Ahhhh, that would explain it, then! The articles were only saying 'English major', so I was confused. In that case he really needed to do more reading a less writing.

SwordKing wrote:

I read on Yahoo news that the shooter's family issued an official apology. I'm most likely in the minority, but I don't think that was neccessary. They didn't do anything and therefore have nothing to apologize for.

I'm inclined to agree they shouldn't be apologizing for his behavior. At the same time, didn't they see their kid was a fucking maniac? Then again...river in Egypt. I think if anything here is disturbing, it's how normal a lot of people found his behavior before. Not that they saw it as acceptable, but that so little was really done. We didn't take him seriously, which really speaks of the overall apathetic attitude people have toward psychotic behavior. It was kinda eyeroll whatever crazyass kid when it was just one person. It took a few more people, huh?

That said, I must admit I find it irritating this is flooding the news when I care more about Iraq and the Bush administration sticking its own dick in its ass. Just seems more important on a wider scale. Yes, there was negligence here. Yes, there are fingers to point and plenty of places to point them. But there are also always going to be crazy people, and we don't even care when they're in office, so we can hardly expect to notice every single one wandering every single school campus.

Actually, he was receiving medical attention.  He was taking antidepressants.  Unfortunately, while those produce a benefit in most cases, there is some evidence that they can promote psychotic behavior in a few others.  Not that this poor guy probably needed much help.  What a lot of people need to realize about this is that tragedies aren't always avoidable.  Pretty much everybody involved did what they knew to do, and I don't think it's reasonable to expect anyone to have done better.  Frankly, this guy was a wild animal.  I don't mean to suggest that it was his fault, any more than the Gulf of Mexico is blameworthy for the destruction of New Orleans, it's just that humans are very complicated machines, especially the human brain, and there will always be cases where something goes horribly wrong.  Regarding Professor Giovanni, who had him removed from her class, she was concerned for the rest of her students.  She's a college professor, not a social worker.  After he was removed, the dean of the department met with him regularly as a private tutor, trying to encourage him to write about how he felt.  They did the best they could.  It just wasn't enough this time.

In unrelated news, the day of the Va Tech shootings, 182 people were killed in a series of bombings in Baghdad.  Nobody really cared.

EDIT: Damn my spelling!

Last edited by Stormcrow (04-26-2007 07:06:33 AM)

morosemocha wrote:

Stormcrow wrote:

In unrelated news, the day of the Va Tech shootings, 182 people were killed in a series of bombings in Baghdad.  Nobody really cared.

That's a little harsh.

You're right, and I'm sorry.  I'm a little on edge today, but that's my problem, and it's no excuse.  All of the sorrow and anger that people feel about the VA Tech shootings is entirely natural and I've no business being upset about it, I just get frustrated when people only are concerned about what's going on in their own backyard and can blithely ignore the same troubles when they happen down the street.  That's natural too I suppose, but that doesn't make me like it.  In case anyone reading this lost someone close in the shootings, you have my sincerest apologies and condolences.  Each such death is a tragedy, no matter what goes on somewhere else.

Stormcrow wrote:

Actually, he was receiving medical attention.  He was taking antidepressants.  Unfortunately, while those produce a benefit in most cases, there is some evidence that they can promote psychotic behavior in a few others.  Not that this poor guy probably needed much help.  What a lot of people need to realize about this is that tragedies aren't always avoidable.  Pretty much everybody involved did what they knew to do, and I don't think it's reasonable to expect anyone to have done better.  Frankly, this guy was a wild animal.  I don't mean to suggest that it was his fault, any more than the Gulf of Mexico is blameworthy for the destruction of New Orleans, it's just that humans are very complicated machines, especially the human brain, and there will always be cases where something goes horribly wrong.  Regarding Professor Giovanni, who had him removed from her class, she was concerned for the rest of her students.  She's a college professor, not a social worker.  After he was removed, the dean of the department met with him regularly as a private tutor, trying to encourage him to write about how he felt.  They did the best they could.  It just wasn't enough this time.

In unrelated news, the day of the Va Tech shootings, 182 people were killed in a series of bombings in Baghdad.  Nobody really cared.

EDIT: Damn my spelling!

If the antidepressants are causing psychotic behavior then the patient should be switched to a different medication. But I'm generally of the opinion, as someone who has struggled with mental illness in the past, that somebody who's unbalanced should be watched closely, especially if other people consider him to be a danger to others. I think the professor did the right thing in having him removed from her class. I don't think she was a hero by any stretching of the definition but frankly one has to look out for oneself. At some point we have to draw a line between "discrimination" and "common sense."

As for the bombings, it's hard for people to get outraged about something if they didn't know that it had happened. Perhaps it's cliche to say that I only know of the world what I read in the papers, but it's true.