Reflecting on the Va. Tech massacre, a professor recalls how one male student, who lived across from her office and possessed “a small armory,” affixed “love-cockroaches” on her door.

She also knew, of “one quasi-psychopathic incompetent [employee]…who remained on the campus payroll for over a dozen years simply because his supervisor was afraid of being killed if he was fired.”

The professor seems to take a dim view of administrators, who said there was nothing to be done when she called upon them for assistance. “The easiest path, from their perspective,” she says, “was to simply get me to shut up.”

Plaintively she asks: “Can administrators and deans really continue to leave professors and other college personnel to deal with deeply disturbed students on their own, with only pencils in their defense?”

No, they must not. Campus leaders – to include trustees – must snap out of their denial and encourage faculty, and students, to come forward with any legitimate fears of danger.

No more shutting up.