South Bay professors have dealt with dark stories too
Daily Breeze 4/21/07
Once deeply concerned over a pupil's violent writing and bizarre behavior, Sharp alerted officials at El Camino College near Torrance. The student was ultimately removed from her class, she said, and campus police officers were posted outside her door.
And there have been others -- some referred for counseling, one was expelled but later readmitted with a psychiatrist's assurance that "the student has resumed taking his medication."
"A student's behavior, his demeanor, if disturbing, coupled with a dark story is what would alarm me," Sharp said, "and we have had here, on occasion, disturbed students.
"Violence could happen, and I'm not at all certain that we can prevent it," she added. "We can only try to circumvent it by early intervention."
Writing teachers around the region are grappling with the same issue now more than ever, in light of this week's tragedy at Virginia Tech. English major Seung-Hui Cho gunned down 32 people on campus before killing himself in what is being called the worst mass shooting in American history. Antisocial in class, he had penned rage- and violence-ridden plays that spurred a professor to tell her supervisor.
In many other ways -- alleged stalking and suicidal tendencies -- Cho showed himself before Monday's horrific rampage to be deeply troubled. But what of other students who write disturbing stories for their classes? Who among them should be considered threats, and flagged for evaluation?
Educators say they are in a unique, sometimes awkward position. Assigning short stories, poems, personal essays and even journal entries, English and writing instructors often get a sneak peek into students' personal lives and private thoughts that few others are privy to. In turn, such teachers may often be the first official eyes in school to get a glimpse of a student's potential psychological problems.
"I give my students a warning at the beginning of the semester ... what the word 'publish' means is 'to make public,' " said Randall Cauthen, an assistant English professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills. "I tell them not to submit to the course, for other people's reading, things that they are not comfortable with revealing. If they want to confront their demons, that's fine, but I make it very explicit that they don't have to and that I'm not asking them to."
Running the Carson-based school's writing workshops, Cauthen has seen stories in which "students have talked about, 'I'd really like to go beat up my ex's new girlfriend,' and that sort of thing," he said. "But I've never seen anything that looked anywhere close to a pattern to me. ... If I did, I think the first thing I would do is talk to someone in the counseling center."
And the student may not necessarily mind.
El Camino College art history major Tracy Hearn, 20, who works in the school's writing lab, said she, for one, would want to be called out if her work seemed disturbing.
"At first I would probably be kind of insulted ... probably angry, resentful. But on the other hand maybe I would want that kind of attention, for someone to pull me aside and say, 'Hey I'm worried about you, let's talk about this,' " Hearn said. "Maybe my angry ramblings would be a cry for help."
Of course, such angry ramblings may also be just a plot device, further blurring the line for teachers ever-more on guard. The conventional wisdom now, most say, is to err on the side of caution, while realizing that violent content alone is not indicative of a violent person.
"I often see dark work -- in part because students want to explore things that seem subversive or frightening and in part because they don't yet understand that dramatic conflict can be achieved through small actions," El Camino instructor Sharp said. "They think someone has to die to create drama. So the violence in student work reflects both their belief that creative work should deal with dark emotions and their inexperience with craft."
For ages, though, literature and the arts in general have been rife with dark and violent words and images, from The Tell-Tale Heart to The Silence of the Lambs. So how does a teacher distinguish between simply disturbing fiction, and fiction that suggests its author is disturbed? How does an educator tell if a student should be considered the next potential Quentin Tarantino, or the next potential Seung-Hui Cho?
"You won't find anybody that teaches darker material than me," said Loyola Marymount University associate English professor Holly Levitsky, who teaches Holocaust literature such as Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's Night, an autobiographical account of his experience in a Nazi death camp. She describes the reading she assigns as "awful, awful material" and "not something anybody should read."
"I wish nobody had to read it, but this happened, and this is one way to teach the truth," she said. Disturbing as it is, "it's purposeful literature."
It's been said that some of the best writing is personal, and one oft-heard writing tip is to "write what you know." Some experts assert the same advice should extend back to teachers when attempting to discern whether a student is truly dangerous.
Disturbing words may raise an eyebrow, as might unusual behavior. Together, the two may raise a bright red flag, yet it could all mean nothing. The best first defense, said Torrance psychologist Carol Francis, is listening to your instincts.
"If a person feels really odd relative to our own sense of what seems normal, that gives us an inclination," said Francis, in practice for 30 years. "If you feel very frightened around that person, and frightened that they could actually do something, that's your internal barometer saying something is not right."