After Virginia Tech, Writing Instructors Confront Ethical Choices -- Update

After Columbine, there was a nationwide backlash against geeks and goths -- kids were being suspended, and worse, for wearing Marilyn Manson tee shirts. What will the Virginia Tech backlash look like, if it comes?

Given all the emphasis on Cho's creative writing, I'd guess student fiction-writers will be feeling the heat. Turning in dark, tortured, soul-searching fiction will be a good way to get sent to a counselor, or wind up interviewed by the local police.

Kimberly Lacey, a graduate teaching instructor at Wayne State University, has a thoughtful blog post on the position creative writing teachers are in now.

So, when does the personal essay/creative writing invite intervention? As the instructor - one who is presumably not properly trained in either crisis management or psychology - when and how do we question the individual? Writing is cathartic to some, tedious to most, and in this situation, perhaps it was a forecast. While this is not a new debate amongst comp instructors, it surely forces one to rethink the proper ethical response. I am fortunate that I have never had to encounter reading an 'outcry' paper, and I'??m still uncertain how I would react if faced with a 'gruesome' piece of writing. I no longer have my students write personal essays, but I do make them blog. Who's 'responsible' then if it'??s publicly accessible? As a human, I'??m deeply saddened and afraid thinking about this event. But as an English instructor, I'm not sure how to react.

Update:

Cho's playwriting professor sent an e-mail to the 22 students in his class telling them not to blame themselves, CNN reports. "Cho's behavior was disturbing to all of us -- and the English
Department tried, with the best of intentions, to both get him help and to make the appropriate authorities aware of his disturbing behavior." The note also makes the obvious, but easily-forgotten point that violent fiction doesn't normally beget violence.

There was violence in Cho's writing -- but there is a huge difference between writing about violence and behaving violently. We could not have known what he would do. We treated him like a fellow student, which is what he was. I believe the English Department behaved responsibly in response to him. And please hear me when I say this: it was our responsibility, not yours. All you could have done was come to me, or some other administration or faculty member, with your concerns -- and you would have been told that we were aware of Seung Cho, we were concerned about him, and we were doing what we believed was appropriate.

Two of Cho's plays, Richard McBeef and *Mr. Brownstone *are here, along with an account of one his former classmates.

When we read Cho's plays, it was like something out of a nightmare. The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn't have even thought of. Before Cho got to class that day, we students were talking to each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school shooter. I was even thinking of scenarios of what I would do in case he did come in with a gun, I was that freaked out about him. When the students gave reviews of his play in class, we were very careful with our words in case he decided to snap. Even the professor didn't pressure him to give closing comments.