from the New York Times:
In a community college classroom here last June, on the first day of the term, the instructor in Jared L. Loughner’s basic algebra class, Ben McGahee, posed what he thought was a simple arithmetic question to his students. He was not prepared for the explosive response.To read the rest, click here.
“How can you deny math instead of accepting it?” Mr. Loughner asked, after blurting out a random number, according to Mr. McGahee.
Mr. McGahee, for one, was disturbed enough by the experience to complain to school authorities, who as early as last June were apparently concerned enough themselves to have a campus officer visit the classroom. And what Mr. McGahee described as a pattern of behavior by Mr. Loughner, marked by hysterical laughter, bizarre non sequiturs and aggressive outbursts, only continued.
“I was getting concerned about the safety of the students and the school,” said Mr. McGahee, who took to glancing out of the corner of his eye when he was writing on the board for fear that Mr. Loughner might do something. “I was afraid he was going to pull out a weapon.”
A student in the class, Lynda Sorenson, 52, wrote an e-mail to a friend expressing her concerns.
“We do have one student in the class who was disruptive today, I’m not certain yet if he was on drugs (as one person surmised) or disturbed. He scares me a bit,” Ms. Sorenson wrote in an e-mail in June that was forwarded Sunday to The New York Times.
“The teacher tried to throw him out and he refused to go, so I talked to the teacher afterward. Hopefully he will be out of class very soon, and not come back with an automatic weapon.”
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4 comments:
Naturally, one cannot read about this particular kid without thinking about the recent incident at Irvine Valley College in which instructors, confronted with an unstable and disturbing student, felt unsafe and awaited some sort of intelligible and reassuring actions by administration. That seems to have led to a resolve to develop a specific "protocol" for just such situations. Unfortunately, a certain notoriously XXXX administrator seems to be the chief authority in this regard. (You can supply your own adjective.)
What is so striking is that the instructor did everything right--and probably as a result avoided campus violence--but this only meant that the violence found another place to land.
Yes, and the law is such that the community college was prevented from warning other colleges (or indeed anything or anybody) about the student. Recently, a troubled student has been barred from attending our college, and he communicated that he will now attend a neighboring college; but we cannot call up that college and provide any heads up. --BvT
Prolly cuz you'd be violating that kid's rights!
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