A couple of things in response to this email from earlier.

First, obviously there are gradations of strange behavior and mental problems. You have to draw a line somewhere and wherever you draw it is going to create problems. But I think we have drawn the line way too far over in terms of tolerating aberrant behavior. We do that partly because we think it makes us “tolerant,” but not compelling sick people who may not know they are sick or may refuse treatment as a function of their sickness is not tolerance so much as a form of callousness (see Jennifer Roback Morse’s deeply humane piece today on this point on the home page).

Secondly, I guess you can characterize any mental illness as “extreme creepiness” if you want. But there are odd people and then there are deeply disturbed people. Cho was the latter, and this judgment is not entirely a matter of hindsight. People weren’t just nervous around him. They were scared of him. The faculty member who tutored him one-on-one had a code word for her assistant to call security should it be necessary. This tells us he wasn’t just shy or creepy, but frightening.

Three–and I think we’d agree on his–the state of the law makes it extremely difficult to compel someone to get treatment. This obviously isn’t the fault of Virginia Tech. But those laws are much too restrictive (certainly in Virginia). I think it should be much easier for schools to act to get deranged kids off campus (read this New York Times op-ed by a woman professor at Oakland University who for the longest time couldn’t do anything about a student who slept in a lab across from her hall and pasted a live cockroach on her door as a “gift”). And it should be at easier for parents and others to force their loved ones with a severe mental illness to get treatment.

Finally, is it really so hard to imagine a world in which an English professor says, “You aren’t going to wear sunglasses in my class.” Says, “If you don’t participate in the discussion in my seminar, you are going to fail.” Says, “If you can’t produce work that can be read aloud without frightening everyone else, you are going to fail.” Says, “Your work is disgusting trash and not up to my standards.” Instead, Cho seemed to get passed along.

Anyway, I can understand the professor’s frustration at all the second-guessing. I don’t want to pretend that there is any magic solution one way or the other (a point we made in the editorial yesterday). But we need to re-adjust the line in terms of what behavior is tolerated, and then schools in the position of Virginia Tech will have more and better options.