When the news came out that a mentally-disturbed student had methodically gunned down 32 students and professors at Virginia Tech, Kathryn Murphy-Judy felt a special kind of horror.
The associate professor of language and literature at Virginia Commonwealth University knew two of the Virginia Tech language instructors — French teacher Jocelyne Couture-Nowak and German teacher Christopher James Bishop — who were shot and killed on April 16. “Two of my colleagues are gone. It affects me personally,” says Murphy-Judy, who teaches French at VCU.
Murphy-Judy says the mood among her fellow professors is more of concern for the students than of faculty self-preservation. But faculty members are reassessing their safety. For example, the VCU Faculty Senate, where Murphy-Judy serves as president, has held special meetings to review teacher security. At the same time, they are trying to keep their perspective. “We’re looking at this globally. At least as many people are dying every day in Iraq,” she says.
Even though attacks on college professors are not common, the horrific slayings at Virginia Tech show just how much at risk they can be when they try to do their jobs. They face formidable obstacles, such as working in open classroom environments in states where lax gun laws make it easy to get weapons. Even if mentally unstable students can be identified, legal issues make it difficult to get them out of the classroom and into a mental facility.
Although an increasing number of students are seeking help for mental health issues from campus counselors, privacy laws make it hard for admissions officials to identify early on students who may require intervention. The federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act prohibits the release of medical records, preventing college admissions officials from screening prospective students for mental health problems.
In classes, professors simply can’t know how students will react if they object to course subject matter or if they receive failing grades or ones they believe are unfair.
In December 2005, for example, an associate professor in the department of clinical laboratory and nutritional sciences at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell was stabbed by a student who was incensed by his failing grade. In 2002, Robert Stewart Flores, a 41-year-old divorced father of two and a veteran of the 1990 Gulf War, shot and killed three teachers at the University of Arizona nursing school. Flores was receiving failing grades and exacted revenge with two handguns and 200 rounds of ammunition.
