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Student Banned From Minnesota Campus Over Facebook Comments
Be careful just how you vent online is the lesson from this story pointed out by reader kungfugleek, from which he excerpts: "A University of Minnesota student has been banned from the Twin Cities campus after three of her instructors felt threatened by some of her Facebook postings. Amanda Tatro was patted down and questioned by campus police when she got to class Monday. The 29-year-old mortuary science student had posted comments on her Facebook page after breaking up with her boyfriend. She told her Facebook friends she wanted to stab a 'certain someone in the throat' with an embalming instrument. Tatro said she was 'looking forward to Monday's embalming therapy.' When the instructors learned of the postings, they contacted police." The Star-Tribune's account offers more detail.
What the fuck is it that you american's live in such state of paranoia?
Yes, I understand that you guys have had some gruesome stuff happen at schools and all, but some dark and frustrated writing on a wall is no threat at all. Man, if Nietzche or Sartre studied in today's america, or even burroughs or kerouac, they'd be behind bars by now.
NO SIG
I think the question is if written comments like that should be construed as threats, or more like a journal where you'd just write for yourself. I'm also wondering if there's any other evidence that anyone on campus was targetted. The ban should have been lifted after the full story was found out.
There's no place like localhost
A society that expects a group of people to judge the actions of other people, but is too large to allow these people to know each other well enough to be able to make such judgement combined with an increasing amount of private information being publicly communicated = recipe for trouble.
threatening to kill someone publicly is never a good idea.
Yes, she was upset and "venting" but what you put on the Net stays on the Net. I always treat EVERYTHING I post online as public and manage my words with care, as they may come to haunt me someday. It's a shame. What she needed was to be forced to attend counseling, not have her entire college career ruined. But maybe people will learn from her mistake.
Do not disturb. Already disturbed. http://www.teaaddictedgeek.com
Threats are threats.
Yup, sounds about right.
Next topic, please!
I believe saying I want to is quite different from saying I'm going to.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
"For whatever reason, this professor took it personally."
Hrm, was it the part about stabbing, "a certain someone in the throat with a trocar," or maybe the part about spending, "the evening updating my 'Death List #5' and making friends with the crematory guy," all in the context of, "looking forward to Monday's embalming therapy?" And yet the dumb bitch actually doesn't get it. Being pissy is one thing, making very specific public remarks about killing someone and disposing of the body, on the other hand, pretty much guarantees a visit by the po-po, and not to pat you on your angsty little head and tell you it's going to be OK.
Real adults also recognize that venting doesn't constitute a threat. Unfortunately, we don't have a society of real adults, we have a society of paranoid, litigious cowards.
Frankly, though, I think this is a good thing. Sooner or later, everyone is going to have embarrassing material about themselves available online, and then maybe we can accept that we're all a bunch of irrational monkeys, lighten the fuck up a bit, and get on with life.
Consider this one to grow on, Amanda. Don't publicly threaten to stab others in the throat with an embalming knife. It makes people nervous.
According to the article, the Ms. Tatro complained that for whatever reason, the professor was "taking it personally". Excuse me? She was talking very explicitly about her "Death List #5" and what exactly she would do with her very sharp instrument the following Monday in class.
How is a professor to know who is "just ranting" and who might be mentally unbalanced? I say, a prudent move by the prof.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
For every few thousand cases where some dumb student posts an angry comment and it means nothing, there's the next case where the student then stabs their professor in the throat. Where do you draw the line?
Either we say freedom of speech is important or we say any threat is to be taken seriously.
Now, if the students want to protest this action, I recommend that thousands of the students at the university ALSO post "I also want to stab the professor and the chief of police in the throat with a mortuary knife". When confronted with a massive civil unrest protest of this kind, the police and authorities usually fold. The university will quickly ban one student but would never ban 100 students, much less several thousand students.
As with ALL civil unrest, you have to be prepared to take the punishment tho. It's always possible the university would indeed ban several thousand students.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Yeah, but you don't say that kind of stuff publicly.
Would you say "I want to kill him..." If there were 3 police officers right beside you?
The only ridiculous thing about this is her actions. Free speech or not, Fake death threats or not, what she did was just plain stupid. Cry to yourself, not the world. Because only the government listens.
Yes, but how do you know the difference?
At Columbine and Virginia Tech the perpetrators had made public statements like this and it was blown off by the authorities.
What if had happened in THIS case? I'll tell you what, "The Authorities", would have been publicly eviscerated for "ignoring the clear warning signs that this student was disturbed and homicidal".
So if you're in Authority you're damned if you do and damned if you don't! In the end the only safe way is to err on the side of caution and have the situation checked out.
If she actually DID the kill the poor sap, and we find out that she posted about it beforehand on her FB page, everyone would be up in arms... "Why didn't someone do something about it? This could have been prevented!"
We can't have it both ways.
You draw the line at the moment that student picks up a dangerous instrument and makes a threatening movement in the direction of the professor...and NOT EVER before.
Its as simple as that. Unless there was an actual threat, and actual statement of intent to actually drive a real implement into a real person, then the state has no reason to be involved. The reason is that we are talking about the use of force against a person (thats what law is). Force should be reserved for a last resort.
If there is even a question that it may be used against an innocent person, we should ALWAYS err on the side of letting the guilty go free because punishing the innocent is so abhorrent as to make the state no better than the criminals which is claims to protect us from.
Frankly, I think the value statement of "It is better to let 10 guilty men go free than to convict one innocent man" is too lenient on the use of power. Its better to let any number of the guilty go free, than to convict one innocent man.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
You are clearly wrong, in general. Most adults take no responsibility for anything, much less words.
Which is why it's sad that no one learned the real lesson of Columbine. The lesson wasn't "listen to angry music" or "dress a certain way" and you'll kill people. The lesson was "if you're an asshole to people, eventually someone is going to shoot your ass -- so just be nice".
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
You don't like puns, do you?
School has always been like a prison, they just removed the gilded part. Why AC? Your post was insightful.
I think the issue here is that people would rather err on the side of caution. You can't walk up to someone on the street and say "I'm gonna kill you" without consequences. They are illegal and a felony. Why would anyone think the same thing over the phone, or via e-mail would be any less so?
She said that she "wanted" to do something, not that she had any intention of following through with it. An unrelated post said she was looking forward to class.
There's a world of difference between wanting to do something and actually doing something.
From the actual news piece, I doubt the instructors actually feared for their own safety, at least, I hope not.
From an instructor's perspective (in physics), it's not cool to joke about using lab equipment in dangerous ways because I am not your friend, I do not know that you are joking, and I am assuming responsibility for you while you're in my class. I don't want you to hurt yourself (what I really worry about), particularly under my supervision. I have sent students home who were too immature to handle dangerous lab equipment (high voltage power supplies, radioactive materials... no one has done anything dangerous with the blocks on an inclined plane--no one has tried), I have not had anyone I felt was too depressed or angry (yet). I hope I would make make such a student take a visit to a school counselor before going to the police!
I work in education. If I had a student say they were looking forward to killing someone in my class, I'd be concerned. And if they DID kill someone in my class, everyone would be posting here saying, "Jeez, didn't you all see the clear signs posted on the internet? Why didn't anyone do anything?"
Oh, that's right. People would NEVER post legitimate threats on a a publicly-readable site.
FTA you linked: "Detailed Horrific Slay Plot on Web Diary"
I believe a detailed description of how someone was going to horrifically slay a person/persons is a slight bit different from an ad-hoc remark venting frustration.
Here's the main problem, yours and the university in question:
People are so afraid of their own damn shadows that they refuse to apply critical thinking to even the most simple of circumstances.
Seriously, try actually processing information before reacting with reckless abandon.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.