Virginia Tech Debacle/ Work of a Deranged Man............Or

If faculty and other students had been kind toward this student, he never would have committed such violent acts.

By the way, where are his parents?

Miller wrote:

If faculty and other students had been kind toward this student, he never would have committed such violent acts.

By the way, where are his parents?

Of course I can vouch - but in the many interviews I saw/read, it seems that many of the students tried to reach out and talk with him - he basically didn't respond. One mentioned offering some candy to him. It sounds as if other students had acted kindly or at least tried to talk with him, but he didn't respond.

JPB wrote:

Who was unkind? How were they unkind?

Va. Tech shooter was laughed at
BLACKSBURG, Va. - Long before he boiled over, Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui was picked on, pushed around and laughed at over his shyness and the strange way he talked when he was a schoolboy in the Washington suburbs, former classmates say.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070419/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_shooting

Miller wrote:

If faculty and other students had been kind toward this student, he never would have committed such violent acts.

By the way, where are his parents?

Of course I can vouch - but in the many interviews I saw/read, it seems that many of the students tried to reach out and talk with him - he basically didn't respond. One mentioned offering some candy to him. It sounds as if other students had acted kindly or at least tried to talk with him, but he didn't respond.

Linkat wrote:

Miller wrote:

If faculty and other students had been kind toward this student, he never would have committed such violent acts.

By the way, where are his parents?

Of course I can vouch - but in the many interviews I saw/read, it seems that many of the students tried to reach out and talk with him - he basically didn't respond. One mentioned offering some candy to him. It sounds as if other students had acted kindly or at least tried to talk with him, but he didn't respond.

He had problems early in his childhood, due presumably to his speech difficulties.

Va. Tech shooter was laughed at
BLACKSBURG, Va. - Long before he boiled over, Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui was picked on, pushed around and laughed at over his shyness and the strange way he talked when he was a schoolboy in the Washington suburbs, former classmates say.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070419/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_shooting

The communication problems of autism vary, depending upon the intellectual and social development of the individual. Some may be unable to speak, whereas others may have rich vocabularies and are able to talk about topics of interest in great depth. Despite this variation, the majority of autistic individuals have little or no problem with pronunciation. Most have difficulty effectively using language. Many also have problems with word and sentence meaning, intonation, and rhythm.

Here is what was stated about why Cho was not "Put away"

.....


"You can't do anything unless there's imminent risk that's somewhat foreseeable to take away someone's civil rights. I mean, you can have them hospitalized if you, as a mental health professional, feel that that risk is there," said Eells, associate director for counseling and psychological services at Cornell's Gannett Health Services.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/19/student.counseling/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Not disagreeing fishin - just spewing what the "experts" are stating as an excuse.

I spent more than a year in Korea during my three years in the army. That was more than 30 years ago, but i recall Korea and the Koreans fondly. I even learned to speak some Korean, and to read enough to read a bus schedule and get around a little (in the 9th Century, a Korean "King" created an alphabet for them, because otherwise a Korean had to learn Chinese in order to write--that's a godsend to Westerners who want to learn Korean).

I learned that there were three forms of address. The form of address which one uses when speaking to children and dumb animals; the form of address one uses when speaking to people of (roughly) equivalent age; the form of address one uses when speaking to elders, who are, almost without exception, to be treated with an elaborate respect. There is also a very highly developed sense of extended family. So, for example, in a small village, you would treat everyone as though a member of your own family, you simply would show more deference and consideration to those to whom you were actually related by blood or marriage. Therefore, as soon as you are even casually acquainted with a member of your own generation, you address them as "brother" or "sister" and use the speech forms common to an equal within one's own family. All elderly persons are treated with an elaborate courtesy, and treated as though they were related by blood. Even with a complete stranger, one addresses them as "grandfather" or "grandmother." With someone who is old enough to command your respect, but not old enough to be considered truly elderly, you usually address them as "uncle" or "aunt."

There are even degrees of deference within those categories. You would say "old respected grandfather" to an elderly man to whom you are related, or simply if you wished to make a point of your respect for him. To indicate close relation or respect to an older person who is not actually elderly, you might say "respected uncle" or "respected aunt."

I add the caveat that this was more than 30 years ago, and long before Korea became affluent and adopted a more urban culture (of course, there were many large cities in Korea then, but not a lot of really affluent people--most people lived on very little by our standards in the early 1970s). But, this was my experience of how they viewed public and private behavior.

It would be unbearable shame to publicly admit to being homeless, indigent, or insane. This is because such people were (long ago) considered to be afflicted by devils, and to be avoided so as not to risk contamination. Even knowing that, Koreans in the 1970s still had that kind of reaction to people--but it was tied up with "strangeness." If someone in your family were mentally ill, it would be publicly referred to as an ordinary illness which resisted the efforts of the doctors. Everyone would understand, but no one would be rude enough directly allude to it, lest one bring shame on the family, which would cause for bitter hatred. At the same time, to be so poor as to be indigent, or to be homeless, would be a condemnation of the entire family, since families would be expected to find a place for everyone, even if it were only a mat in the corner. Old relatives who had no children could still expect to get their "rice bowl," meaning they would be fed each day, and given a corner to sleep in, for which they might be expected to do some small menial tasks, such as sweeping the court yard, or sprinkling water to lay the dust. Such a person might only be addressed as "grandmother" rather than "respected grandmother" or "old respected grandmother," but the still would have a place, and modicum of respect. The rice bowl is such a sacred institution that if you decided, well i'll help the old girl out and sweep the court yard for her, she would become irate, and everyone around would agree with her, because your action would be seen as "breaking her rice bowl." (The Koreans called civil service "the iron rice bowl," because you could lazy and worthless as doggie poop, and you wouldn't get fired.)

But it definitely is a village mentality, even when applied to neighborhoods in a city. Everyone knows you don't have to show any respect to those barbaric savages from that village on the other side of the mountain (or the other side of the highway in a city), those damned heathens. They're all crazy, you know. Decent folks don't go there, because you might catch a devil. The place is overrun with devils and ghosts. (When i was there, even though young Koreans laughed at the stories of old timers about devils and ghosts, Korean movies about devils and ghosts were the most popular, and a movie about a doomed love affair between a beautiful young couple who were haunted and plagued by devils would be a barn burner at the box office.)

Nothing worse could be imagined than being homeless and indigent. It meant not only were you shamed, and probably either inflicted with a devil or haunted, it meant you family was shamed, because they couldn't provide you a rice bowl. A family would likely try to drive such a person from the neighborhood so as not to shame the family. The word i learned for "lies" was "kujimara" (long time ago, i don't allege that's exactly right), which means "beggar's talk." It is automatically assumed that beggars are liars. The Koreans i knew would try to get past a beggar while pretending he or she did not exist, and if they couldn't, they'd throw money down, so that they could get away without the beggar touching them, which might give the devil that plagued the beggar, or the ghost that haunted him or her a chance to latch on to them.

Once again, this was all more than 30 years ago, and is a description of what i saw among a largely rural population--even the city dwellers were often newly arrived from the country. At that time Korean farmers earned about $100 a year (1971 statistic which i read somewhere, i forget), and concentrated on raising enough to fill everyone's rice bowl--they even paid their taxes in kind, usually rice, because only the wealthiest peasants could afford to keep livestock bigger than chickens. Things may have changed considerably since that time, and could not have been said to be universally applicable even then.

It fits, yep. I'm not sure how his skills in written English fit into the whole thing.

Mostly I'm just commenting that I'm very aware of how a feeling that one cannot communicate with one's peers can be extremely isolating, in and of itself. Especially since he was apparently subject to ridicule when he did open his mouth.

As in, if it were just that he wasn't fluent in English, he could have turned to fellow Korean immigrants to communicate with until he learned. But he couldn't even do that.

May well be because of autism, may be some kind of interaction between those two issues. I was wondering if autism = speech impediment, it seems to in some ways but not others.

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer 7 minutes ago

BLACKSBURG, Va. - Long before he boiled over, Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui was picked on, pushed around and laughed at over his shyness and the strange way he talked when he was a schoolboy in suburban Washington, former classmates say.
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Chris Davids, a Virginia Tech senior who graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va., with Cho in 2003, recalled that the South Korean immigrant almost never opened his mouth and would ignore attempts to strike up a conversation.

Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud, and when it was Cho's turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled. Finally, after the teacher threatened him with an F for participation, Cho started to read in a strange, deep voice that sounded "like he had something in his mouth," Davids said.

"As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, `Go back to China,'" Davids said.

Regan Wilder, 21, who attended Virginia Tech, high school and middle school with Cho, said she was in several classes with Cho in high school, including advanced-placement calculus and Spanish. She said he walked around with his head down, and almost never spoke. And when he did, it was "a real low mutter, like a whisper."

She said she was sure Cho probably was picked on in middle school, but so was everyone else. And it didn't seem as if English was the problem for him, she said. If he didn't speak English well, there were several other Korean students he could have reached out to for friendship, but he didn't, she said.