In which I bitch a little bit about Lucinda Roy.
This might be totally boring to you, but I had to put it down 'cause I'm irritated.
She was clearly right to be afraid. And it wasn't inappropriate to take her concerns to university officials. However: it was a fucking creative writing class.
I've only been teaching two semesters, but I've already encountered plenty of violence in my students' writing. I myself have written very violent things. You can't predict that a student is going to be violent just because their work has violent content. It's pissing me off that this lady seems to be insisting that something could have been done. It seems to me that would have been totally impractical.
I realize that the natural response is to wonder where did it all go wrong? How did officials miss all the warning signs? Well, his behavior was certainly something to worry about all on its own. But there are also lots of people who've behaved in disturbing ways and haven't hurt anyone.
People are talking about the law and how the law is flawed here. Assholes on TV are calling for the laws to be changed. Well, is the law flawed here? I don't know.
You can't predict these things sometimes.
I mean, especially with college students. They're right at that age when emotional and mental disturbances really start to surface, and they're put under new and great pressures, making it all the more likely that those disturbances will manifest. You're going to institutionalize them all?
She was clearly right to be afraid. And it wasn't inappropriate to take her concerns to university officials. However: it was a fucking creative writing class.
I've only been teaching two semesters, but I've already encountered plenty of violence in my students' writing. I myself have written very violent things. You can't predict that a student is going to be violent just because their work has violent content. It's pissing me off that this lady seems to be insisting that something could have been done. It seems to me that would have been totally impractical.
I realize that the natural response is to wonder where did it all go wrong? How did officials miss all the warning signs? Well, his behavior was certainly something to worry about all on its own. But there are also lots of people who've behaved in disturbing ways and haven't hurt anyone.
People are talking about the law and how the law is flawed here. Assholes on TV are calling for the laws to be changed. Well, is the law flawed here? I don't know.
You can't predict these things sometimes.
I mean, especially with college students. They're right at that age when emotional and mental disturbances really start to surface, and they're put under new and great pressures, making it all the more likely that those disturbances will manifest. You're going to institutionalize them all?