Privacy and community safety, a delicate balance
Comments (7)
Friday, April 20, 2007 | 03:36 PM ET
By Henry Champ
Now comes the hard part.
Virginia law enforcement has found it's killer, Cho Seung-Hui. They have ruled out any other person or persons being involved. They are now in the midst of completing the picture of how the actual murders took place.
It's the kind of dogged police work that will take weeks, perhaps months.
The harder questions, though — why this happened and what might have been done differently? — will take much longer to deal with. The key nut to crack here: What's the appropriate balance between community safety and an individual's right to his or her own personal records?
There are two investigations looking into these questions. One is a panel appointed by the university itself, Virginia Tech, focusing on how it's personnel dealt with the unfolding tragedy.
The more important is an investigation ordered by Virginia Governor Tim Kaine.
Kaine named retired state police superintendent Gerald Massengill to head the inquiry. Former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, the first head of the Department of Homeland Security provides, is onside to provide some political muscle and five others, experts in law enforcement, the law, medicine and education, will add the important know-how.
Three areas of focus
Kaine's narrowed the panel's focus to three areas:
1.Cho's mental state. Did warning signs go unheeded? Did the information flow fail, because legal and administrative barriers kept critical information from Virginia Tech officials? What were the circumstances surrounding Cho's purchase of handguns and ammunition?
2. A minute-by-minute deconstruction of the rampage. Here one of the key issues is the decision by the university not to close the campus after the first shootings in which two were killed. Two hours later, Cho was blasting away in Norris Hall, claiming thirty more lives.
3. An analysis of law enforcement and emergency medical response to the calamity.
Getting full answers to these questions is not going to be easy. President George W. Bush touched on the central dilemma at an Oklahoma town hall meeting on Thursday.
He said he didn't want to draw conclusions because "they're still digging out the facts." But, the president suggested, concerns about personal privacy, while understandable, might be preventing officials from taking much needed action when it comes to those with mental illness.
By now, everyone knows that Cho had a number of run-ins with Tech's bureaucracy, particularly its campus police. These incidents involved young women, a fellow student's fears that Cho might be suicidal, bursts of rage, disturbing reports from instructors who feared his presence in their classrooms and were worried about "blood-drenched writings," and a fire that Cho started in a dorm room.
On Dec. 13, 2005, the Virginia Tech police managed to get Cho to accept voluntary detention at St. Albans psychiatric centre in nearby Radford. That visit led to a judge signing an order that said Cho "presents an imminent danger to self or others."
Cho was ordered to evaluation. But it's here that the trail goes cold.
The known unknowns
Cho apparently stayed at St. Albans only a very short time. He then returned to class.
It is not known, because of privacy laws, what might have been uncovered at St Albans, or what the university was told about his condition. It is also not known whether Cho had been given a drug program to follow, or if he was ordered to seek regular consultation.
It is known only that his roommates were told nothing about his condition and that the campus police force was told nothing and never monitored his activities.
The governing privacy laws here are called the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, passed in 1974. It makes it illegal to disclose a student's personal records to family members without the student's authorization.
According to an expert in legal law, Dana Fleming, "colleges can disclose a student's private records if they believe there's a health and safety emergency. But, Fleming told the New York Times, "that health and safety exception hasn't been much tested in the courts, so it's left to be tested on a case-by-case basis."
Cho was not one of those test cases.
Complicating the problems for those in the university health field is that, where there have been test cases, the courts have tended to rule against universities for disclosure of records and the monetary penalties were high.
Balancing privacy needs with community safety is not easy, as President Bush admitted. But there are some alarming statistics that make the efforts of this inquiry extraordinarily important.
Last year, the American College Health Association assessment, covering nearly 95,000 students at117 campuses, found that nine per cent of students had seriously considered suicide in the previous year, and that one in 100 had actually attempted to take their own lives.
The study led to many health experts calling for university policies to be upgraded to meet the challenges of mental health on campus. Governor Kaine's inquiry can certainly help shed more light on this front.
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Henry Champ is CBC Newsworld's correspondent in Washington, D.C., delivering Canadian viewers the latest developments in the U.S. political arena. Recently, he has been a leading Canadian voice on coverage of the war on terrorism, the war in Iraq and the growing concerns over the Canada-U.S. relationship.
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Comments (7)
Chuck Ladouceur
Some are calling that Cho should have been expelled, well that would have solved nothing but brought this on even sooner and maybe more deadly. When a nutbar is willing to kill and then himself, there is not much you can do but maybe lock him up if you have time to see what his plans are then again half of the USA would be locked up.
Posted May 6, 2007 06:47 PM
Kelly
Halifax
I think that the fault lies with the administration at Virginia Tech. It was clear in 2003 that this student was trouble: what stayed the university's hand when it came to disciplinary action? A student attending a Canadian university and exhibiting such behaviour would likely have been expelled long beforehand and his or her record would have prevented another university from accepting a transfer.
The competition among U.S. colleges and universities has most of them cutting corners and each other's throats to attract students and their money. Many have lowered academic standards and permitted into their midst students whose personalities and aptitudes would normally preclude them. All this is to lend institutions greater legitimacy, higher rankings in _U.S. News and World Report_'s annual college issue and a larger endowment fund. It is this is free-market attitude among many U.S. university administrators that allowed Cho Seung-Hui and others of his ilk to continue attending classes despite the concerns of his professors and fellow students.
I wouldn't let the English faculty get off scot-free, either. College professors who opted to give this young man individual lectures and tutorials trumped the safety of their other students with perhaps an opportunity to bolster reputations for discovering the next Sylvia Plath or J.D. Salinger. Given the quality of Cho's writing, however, either they have found a new voice of the Ironic school or they have done themselves
and their university no favours, notwithstanding Cho's horrific act.
Like Columbine before it, however, there are a myriad directions in which to point a finger, and in not one of them will any resources be expended to help move forward from this tragedy.
Posted April 27, 2007 09:01 AM
Wa'el Darwish
Montreal
How many investigations called before? They will complete the investigation after we forget the incident. No body would care then. As usual if you want to sweep any problem under the carpet; give it to a committee or investigator!!!
When the American College Health Association say there are 9% 0f 95.000 students had seriously considered suicide in the previous year. How the administration of the college could solve the problem? From here let us start. There are hundred of thousands of the students are depressed and need treatment. Either we treat them without question, or we do not treat them and wait for more accidents like what had happened, or we ask and look after the reasons behind the causes of the depression!!
Posted April 23, 2007 09:13 AM
Gawd uv Grammer
burbank
Wow, I was expecting commentary about the issues surrounding the circumstances justifying the release of personal information to local and/or private security personnel for the safety of many.
Instead I got Mrs. O'Farrell's grade 4 English class, and a couple of cats in a bag.
Posted April 22, 2007 09:19 PM
bp
Why can't someone take a second to point out an all-too-common (but understandable) error, without then being told to "get a life"?
Posted April 22, 2007 11:00 AM
Spell Checker
Toronto
To Lila...Get a life Please...You have ignored the sometimes bizarre content of H's writing and concentrated on the "Its" spelling rather than "Its" content....
Posted April 21, 2007 04:46 PM
lila
The very first line of this article contains a language error, namely, "it's killer" should be written "its killer". The rule governing this, as I learned in secondary school where English was taught to me as a second language, is that "'" stands for the missing "i" in "is". If there is no missing "i", there is no "'".
Maybe somebody should uphold some language standards and should edit the articles published on CBC news before publishing them?
we stand corrected....h
Posted April 21, 2007 02:12 PM