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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 always make sure I am an anonymous coward (or at least have my facebook status to private) before I make my homicidal feelings known.
By the way, I am gonna get all you suckers!!!!
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
Morticians have a morbid sense of humor? SAY IT AIN'T SO! *face palm*
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
This whole thing makes me want to beat someone in the face with a keyboard. I'm looking forward to Tomorrow's "development therapy".
No, I actually mean I'm going to qwerty some bitches foreheads here. Sorry for any confusion.
Its a dead field.
/Sorry, had to be done.
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
So, the Professors were deathly afraid of her morbid comments, which lead to her to be terminated as a student. I don't think she should have undertaken her commenting to that level. I just wish that the professors would just bury the hatchet and let her rest in peace.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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.
And I do believe I was a minor during that childhood. If someone said it on the net it has to be taken seriously. I'm holding my breath waiting for the police to take Mr. Lucas into custody or, at the very least, Chris Hansen to ask him to have a seat.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
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"
So you feel that the professors are taking responsibility for destroying a person's college career because she was emotional after a breakup?
From the article:
Despite Tatro's concerns that her ban from campus will mean not being able to participate in the process of reviewing her case, Wolter said that "students are entitled to due process and to participate in the process, as well as an appeals process should they disagree with the outcome."
Tatro hopes that happens quickly: She's already missed an exam and is set to miss several more. She has since set her Facebook profile to private.
I've read a couple of comments about how her college career is "destroyed", etc. That has yet to be determined. I support the professor's decision, but I hope the University doesn't permanently ban her.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
You are clearly wrong, in general. Most adults take no responsibility for anything, much less words.
This is why I only post pictures of LOLCats on any social network I am part of.
She just needed to post a pic of a kitten in the morgue with the caption "I am in yur Morgue, stabbing yur throt!"
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Yes, but how do you know the difference?
Even small statements made online are not devoid of context. If there is a rash of this behavior and a reoccurring pattern of such statements then yes, they should be taken seriously. However, if a student who has no history of violence or even anti-social behavior* makes an off-the-cuff statement such as this it should be taken in the appropriate context of an upset person venting frustration.
As is noted, this was posted on facebook for all the world to see. If it were truly a threat it would either be in a much more personal venue or you would likely be able to see a pattern of other such public statements.
*yes I know this is overly generalized and not really a valid way to assess anything about a person.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
On the contrary, I'd say it's quite the active field; people are dying to get in.
You don't know the difference. And it doesn't matter. The real issue here is that angry statements are a very common way of blowing off steam, and campus killings (let alone spree killings, which happen so infrequently you'd be better off wasting your adrenaline worrying about being raped by a rabid walrus on main street) very rare. The false positive rate is astronomical.
Saying, after any given incident, "if we'd just paid more attention to when Timmy said he wanted to shoot someone, this all could have been prevented" is exactly like saying, of a patient who died of a rare occult brain cancer, "if we had paid attention that one time she said she had a headache, she'd be alive".
People get angry. Get over it. No, what she said wasn't particularly polite, but at least it wasn't the sort of saccharine political correctness and obsequious niceness that characterizes modern life.
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
The mortuary industry is very, very, very conservative. They take a dim view on anything that could tarnish their reputation. If it was any other industry, I would find this a ridiculous over reaction.
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!
As anyone here ever subject to a break-up can attest, the ex will always want to kill you, certainly at least for the first week.
(Regardless of cause, or who did or said what, or who initiated it - and regardless that this is /. and I must be new here.)
So, today's lesson is simple - always date girls attending school in Minnesota.
The negative press she'll receive after her tirade will have you mercy-dating as the good guy in no time!
As Homer likes to say - SWISH!
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
she is studying mortuary science; Of course her posts are dark.
What next? Man studying at clown school thrown out because his facebook posts were too evil?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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?"
Well it's a cutthroat business... Most of them end up going to pieces.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
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.
What about this?
http://cabinet.auriol.free.fr/Documents/cache_catharsis.htm
"""
Popular belief in the catharsis theory remains strong despite the theory's dismal record in research findings. According to the catharsis hypothesis, acting aggressively or even viewing aggression is an effective way to reduce anger and aggressive feelings. One likely reason for the continued widespread belief in catharsis is that the mass media continue to endorse the view that expressing anger or aggressive feelings is healthy, constructive, and relaxing, whereas restraining oneself creates internal tension that is unhealthy and bound to lead to an eventual blowup.
The present research was concerned with a pair of related questions. First, can media support for the catharsis hypothesis cause people to engage in catharsis-seeking activities, such as aggressive action? Second, if media messages do persuade people to believe in the effectiveness of catharsis, will their own indulgence in aggressive action produce that effect?
The concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy suggests that people's beliefs can shape their choices and the outcomes of their actions, so that expectations tend to come true by virtue of the changed behaviors resulting directly from the expectations (e.g., Darley & Fazio, 1980). Although researchers have mostly failed to find laboratory evidence of catharsis effects, it is plausible that media endorsement produces such self-fulfilling prophecies, which in turn might be sufficient to sustain popular belief in catharsis. In the present research, we provided people with procatharsis messages telling them that acting aggressively or expressing anger is a good way to reduce inner tensions. Consistent with the self-fulfilling prophecy notion, we investigated whether such messages would increase behavioral choices of aggressive activity following an anger provocation (Study 1) and, more important, would help produce the anticipated benefits of expressing anger (Study 2)--specifically, by reducing aggressive behavior toward another person after the participant was supposedly able to reach catharsis by hitting a punching bag.
"""
That said, I agree with you lots of aspects of our current social system, especially the school system, are messed up in various ways. My own thoughts on how to fix them:
"Post-Scarcity Princeton, or, Reading between the lines of PAW for prospective Princeton students, or, the Health Risks of Heart Disease"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html
Also related by me more recently on education issues:
http://www.cnewmark.com/2009/12/making-govt-work-a-huge-step.html#comments
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005379.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005584.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/006005.html
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
This happened at Eastern Illinois University sometime last year. It was even worse at EIU as the reason the student was banned and expelled was his status saying, "[on Tuesday] things are going down." That Tuesday happened to be his birthday, with a big party going on at the bowling alley. There also happened to be a major sports conference going on Tuesday night. Simply outrageous action, but... That being said, everything that can be found on the subject has very little to do with what the university states and is almost entirely heresy from the banned former student as the university's policy is to not comment on such occurrences and EIU's journalism is not necessarily the best. Links posted below for interested parties to follow: http://media.www.dennews.com/media/storage/paper309/news/2009/03/03/News/33.Update.Student.Banned.From.Campus.For.Allegedly.Posting.Threats-3656537.shtml http://media.www.dennews.com/media/storage/paper309/news/2009/03/04/News/Student.Threat.Was.A.Misunderstanding-3658414.shtml http://media.www.dennews.com/media/storage/paper309/news/2009/03/05/Opinions/Editorial.Walkers.Banning.Leaves.Questions.Unanswered-3660348.shtml Yeah, break ups happen and making some statement about how much you want to kill your ex happen as well, not that we would know as we all are on /. but still. When someone gets banned and expelled for saying, "in five days things are going down," something's really wrong.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
... back when a conversation would simply "die" after whatever dumbass comment was made on impulse during a brief moment of frustration?
Nowadays, we're all expected to bottle our emotions, letting them slowly fester into a mental illness that could eventually result in a random explosion of violent behavior toward anyone who might rub you the wrong way at just the right moment.
Knee-jerk reactions to off-color commentary made to a completely unrelated audience are likely going to be the cause of several future columbine-like incidences. And why? Because you can't give anyone even the slightest bit of breathing room to themselves.
The internet may have brought the world closer together, but perhaps that difference is starting to make a number of us feel claustrophobic.
Also, how do such comments reach such seemingly unrelated audiences? Is it just coincidence, or is someone constantly watching this person for some specific purpose?
8==8 Bones 8==8
Seriously though, what were the police thinking? The police should have specifically known that acting on these comments would place them and the college into a bad position. The fact alone that the comments lack immanency mean that they cannot take action as the "threats" are without credibility.
Second, the school cannot just ban access to it's campus based upon words that a student made that are not illegal. Not only is her speech protected speech, there is no excuse to single out this woman over the thousands of other women who express opinions of equivalent displeasure.
Does the university go into lock down every time someone mentions "far bomb"? Do people get arrested when talking about shooting up another person in counterstrike? Does the bomb squad come out when someone says "thats the bomb!"?
Again IANAL, but the "Terry Frisk" prior to entering the classroom by the police, like wise does not seem legal to me as well. First off, Terry v. Ohio limits the terry frisk to a non-invasive brief external frisk for hard objects that could potentially be weapons, for the purpose of officer safety.
Given the lack of immanency of the "threats" and the complete normality of such statements being made by individual whom were in a deep intimate relationship that turned into a deeply dissatisfied relationship, there lacks any "reasonable suspicion" for an officer to place himself in a position to deliberately detain in such a fashion as to create a non-consensual encounter that also allows the officer to terry-frisk when they otherwise would not be allowed either.
Terry vs. Ohio states that the limitation on when a Terry Frisk is exceptable when
"...the facts available to the officer at the moment of the seizure or the search warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief that the action taken was appropriate?"
This of course begs the question, was the alleged intended victim of the woman at the class room? What articulable reason did the officer have to believe that the woman posed a danger to the occupants of the class room?
Personally, I hope she financially rapes the police department and the school. These "zero tolerance" policies are absurd and allow for great harm to come to innocent people due to out-of-context innocuous comments or a vindictive person who wishes to harass another.
in 6 months listening music will be illegal and dangerous, in one year thinking wil be a threat,
In the UK all knowledge is banned already.
Theres a law that says its illegal to possess any information that may be useful to a terrorist.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.