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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.
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*
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Learn what? Last time I checked, saying "I want to stab someone in the throat" is different from:
a. Stabbing someone in the throat
b. Threatening to stab someone in the throat
c. Planning to stab someone in the throat
d. Having any intentions of stabbing someone in the throat, at all
e. Being capable of stabbing someone in the throat
I really want to take all your mod points. Quick, ban me for hacking!
What the fuck is it that you american's live in such state of paranoia?
Better question: what the fuck is up with everyone else besides Americans assuming that one or two school officials in isolated incidents means ALL americans are paranoid? I'm not paranoid. Had I been a school administrator, I wouldn't have done shit about this. Maybe I would have e-mailed the dude and told him that no matter how cool his ex said she was, he should not come to her embalming class "just to practice."
I happen to not be the administrator though.
Some parents are irrational about school safety, but that's a universal. Every country has parents overreacting to isolated incidents. Japan is one of the safest countries, school children can ride the subways on their own many places. I remember hearing about a suicide at shinjuku subway station, and reading opinion articles by parents saying they were thinking about not letting their children ride the subway anymore because they might see someone commit suicide. Based on one incident. That's overreacting. These weren't American parents either.
If americans are paranoid more than anyone else, it's about lawsuits. The administration in question was probably being overly cautious in this case not because they suspected the woman would do anything, but to cover their own ass on the extreme off chance that she did, they wouldn't want to get sued.
Speaking as someone who has been sued for $300,000 for a skiing accident involving nothing more than a torn ACL, THAT fear isn't completely irrational.
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.
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On the contrary, I'd say it's quite the active field; people are dying to get in.
I apologize for the generalization. Its wrong on my part, as you justly point out.
That's okay. All you Europeans do it.
Dont worry, It hasnt occurred to anyone that running a school like a prison in the FIRST place, might be a problem.
The adults who make these rules honestly believe every problem has something to do with anything but themselves.
This will serves as an example to others. She doesn't own the campus and getting tossed therefrom isn't different than being fired for cause by an employer.
First, I'm not sure it's the example we want to set. Second, unlike being fired -- she's got thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of student loans now that she owes and possibly no way to complete her degree. She may need to start over if those credits aren't transferable. Also, she didn't say this in the classroom. She said it in a semi-public forum, and if it was a credible threat, where are the police?
Because if she isn't charged with a crime, she's being punished for something that is apparently completely legal to do in public -- and being punished for doing so. Is that the lesson we want to teach? That someone merely needs to be offended to visit personal hardship and grief on their head?
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