Furious Seasons

September 10, 2007

The Age Of Anxiety: Writing Students Under Microscope

Thanks to the Virginia Tech massacre, some universities are looking into how to respond to creative writing students who write what are deemed to be disturbing stories, poems and plays. Inside Higher Ed has some more details on this.

One Virginia Tech prof notes:

“'It may well be that the traditional way of dealing with disturbing writing — relying on the sensitivity and intelligence of the creative writing instructor to respond to a troubled student — is best,' says Ed Falco, director of creative writing at Virginia Tech."

I agree. But given the gravity of what Cho did and how it may have been telegraphed in his creative work at school, you can bet some universities will begin requiring students to undergo mental health evaluations for riffing off of "Good Country People" or "Tell The Women We Are Going" or "The Lottery." Count on it. Of course, this ignores the possibility that a Cho could just as easily have been an accounting student or mathematician.

Either way, I am concerned about the drift in our culture toward climbing up students' butts over what they write and feel. Students are supposed to be experimenting, at least the artistically-inclined should be. Sometimes, in order to grow creatively, students have to write some weird work just to find out where the edge of the creative box is for them. I hope we don't muzzle that tradition.

To me, this represents the same sort of drift we are currently seeing some quarters in the psychiatric community. Nowadays, having one or two symptoms of bipolar disorder, as opposed to having five, can get you labeled as having subthreshold bipolar disorder. And that disorder, at present, doesn't even exist. And of course there is a raging debate about whether the definition of depression has been so softened that we are now diagnosing sadness as clinical depression. Or whether depression is bipolar disorder. And so on.

Well, at least no one is proposing that the definition of schizophrenia be loosened. But stranger things have happened. (Thanks Jonathan.)

Posted by Philip Dawdy at September 10, 2007 12:03 AM

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Comments

Wow.

Where the hell was this when I was in school?

I wrote a poem, it upset the entire English Dept, and the reaction was to submit it to a contest and I won 3 place in best imitation written by someone under 30.

Everyone thought I was imitating Sylvia Plath. I was crying out for help. I only had one prof who told me I would end up dead like her by the time I was 30. And then laughed about it, saying that is what I get for having the type of brain and writing ability I did- I would be dead and drunk by that time.

Oh well. He got half of it right.

This will be great if it saves one life, lets one student get help they need, and just find an adult who will listen to them seriously.

It's like needing that traffic light in the neighborhood, everyone knows you need it, but until some lovely soccer mom dies in her Odyssey with a few kids in the back, it doesn't get done.

Maybe out of a tragedy, a small good thing can arise.

Posted by: susan at September 10, 2007 05:28 AM

Giovanni (Cho's star English Professor) has written some pretty violent stuff herself. No one thinks she's dangerous. It is sad that none of the politically correct protection that surrounds Giovanni spreads to people labeled mentally ill. She wrote the below poem. Cho read it. Did this poem influence his writing? His actions? And yet Giovanni would sue the hell out of VT if it was suggested she get a psych eval.

The True Import Of Present Dialogue, Black vs. Negro (For Peppe, Who Will Ultimately Judge Our Efforts)
by Nikki Giovanni

Nigger
Can you kill
Can you kill
Can a nigger kill
Can a nigger kill a honkie
Can a nigger kill the Man
Can you kill nigger
Huh? nigger can you
kill
Do you know how to draw blood
Can you poison
Can you stab-a-Jew
Can you kill huh? nigger
Can you kill
Can you run a protestant down with your
'68 El Dorado
(that's all they're good for anyway)
Can you kill
Can you piss on a blond head
Can you cut it off
Can you kill
A nigger can die
We ain't got to prove we can die
We got to prove we can kill
They sent us to kill
Japan and Africa
We policed europe
Can you kill
Can you kill a white man
Can you kill the nigger
in you
Can you make your nigger mind
die
Can you kill your nigger mind
And free your black hands to
strangle
Can you kill
Can a nigger kill
Can you shoot straight and
Fire for good measure
Can you splatter their brains in the street
Can you kill them
Can you lure them to bed to kill them
We kill in Viet Nam
for them
We kill for UN & NATO & SEATO & US
And everywhere for all alphabet but
BLACK
Can we learn to kill WHITE for BLACK
Learn to kill niggers
Learn to be Black men

Posted by: Sally at September 10, 2007 08:12 AM

When I was in university (about 7 years ago), one of the guys in my residence jokingly wrote a poem, I can't remember the contents, but it ended with something suicidal. And for some reason he taped it up on the wall of the common area. Really dumb joke. But they (I think it was the residence association) took it very seriously and made him see the campus psychiatrist, or face ejection from residence.

Posted by: Christina T at September 11, 2007 11:18 AM