I guess in future lectures, the prof will skip the slide about peacocks.
Isn’t that a very specific medical diagnosis of her situation?
Links please!
The situation could have been resolved quickly and efficiently had only George Zimmerman been taking the class.
I think you’re all missing the point here: teaching evolution is dangerous!
Secular humanism is all fun and games until some poor girl gets possessed by demons.
You have to weigh the penalty to her against the likely potential of her disrupting more classes and possibly injuring other students in the process. Sorry Mr. Bleeding Heart, but having a safe educational environment for the school’s thousands of other students outweighs the benefit of coddling one crazy bitch.
“Ms. Carr, the disciplinary board has decided to let you off with a stern warning this time— but if you threaten to murder your professor and all your classmates again, there are going to be severe consequences!”
Thats just stupid. Those dormmates should have been excited about getting so close to getting automatic A’s for the semester.
I doubt if she is psychotic. She’s fully aware of what is going on around her and she’s coherent enough to threaten individual members of the class. Manic episode possibly, but if she was on that much of a hair trigger, I doubt she’d have been able to sit in class up to that point. Paranoid? Oh yeah. Paranoid plus some sort of impulse control problem? Very probably.
She was expelled the moment she made specific threats. The shadow of Virginia Tech is deep and profound.
I read the thread before watching the video and I thought people were being unfair to the prof. for not stopping his lecture earlier, but then I watched it. Holy crap did he go on a long time with his lesson!
Do we have the whole story yet? I haven’t attempted to keep up with this. Perhaps she didn’t have a mental breakdown. What if she was totally lucid the entire time and she’s just an asshole that disagreed with the teacher? Maybe that was the third time she did it this year. Again, I have no idea what the case is, but if this is the case, then I would have no problem getting rid of her and if she’s past the point of dropping a class without a refund then that’s her problem not the school’s.
Be in mental instability or anger management issues, I doubt any college is going to take her without a psychiatrist giving the school the OK, which will probably not happen until a few months of sessions.
The other problem with not expelling her is pressure from other students (and probably faculty). If you signed up for a class next semester and ended up in the same room as her would you be okay with that or would you consider transferring to a different class? What about the other students? If the class roster drops low enough the class will get canceled (at least in some cases). If that happens too often, the school is going to have to deal with it.
Also, it’s entirely possibly the expelled her because of the viral nature of the video but may still let her back in next year after she’s ‘received the necessary help.’
Expel her immediately and if she sets foot on campus for any reason shoot her.
Bitch be crazy. No excuses.
Too bad it didn’t happen in a psychology or sociology course about abberant behavior.
We don’t know that she was having a mental breakdown. But even if she was having a full-on psychotic break, the university cannot take the liability of having someone on campus who just threatened to kill their entire class. Just because you’re crazy doesn’t mean that you are insulated from the consequences of your actions.
There were classes with certain instructors / professors I was tempted to go completely psycho in class to see it they could possibly deviate from their lesson plan.
Now I know.
Unfortunately, FERPA restricts the ability of the school to provide a lot of personal information about students without the students’ express written permission. In cases like that, people often will making accusations against the institution that the institution cannot address. We’ve had similar instances where student disciplinary action was necessary for reasons that could not be revealed, and the student body reaction could not be countered adequately because of FERPA.
Whether or not this was this particular student’s first example of outrageous and threatening behavior, whether or not the student was on probation, whether or not there were other contributing factors in the institution’s decision - often that information is not available to the public, which then condemns the institution without knowing all of the story.
Seems that she was hospitalized after the outburst, apparently on an involuntary hold for observation or however it’s termed in Florida. Nothing mentioned about being expelled or being arrested.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/fau-has-student-hospitalized-under-baker-act-after-2252845.html
This account of the incident is directly from FAU’s newspaper: FAU student threatens to kill professor and classmates – UNIVERSITY PRESS
No kidding.
Kolga, I was thinking about you and the other teachers on board who have talked about the problems you have with your students and administrators while I was watching the video, thinking that you guys are really fighting an uphill battle with little support. At least there was all kinds of video evidence for this incident, in case she wants to sue the school and/or the instructor.
I was in a class with a guy who got out of hand once - it wasn’t as bad as this, but he was yelling and throwing things, and the rest of us were pretty much like the students in this video - it’s so unexpected and outside of the norm that you just don’t know how to react.
Thanks for the supportive thoughts 
I luckily have not encountered outbursts at this level, but I have had some…interesting…things occur during class. Of course, I always assume that psychology attracts unstable students and that’s true for at least a couple of my classes. And yes, it is good that there was video evidence in this case. Without it, who knows what would have happened to the instructor?
Because of my personal experiences with unreliable support from administrators, I have started audio-taping all of my classes, and all meetings with students for any reason, and saving the audio. I am convinced that at some point in my career, something is going to happen that’s going to require me to cover my ass for something far more serious than the several complaints that have already been made about me insulting students for telling them that they are wrong when they are wrong.
Well, exactly. I mean, how many people really expect someone to randomly stand up and start screaming and threatening people and then hit people and need to be subdued? There’s always a sense of “is this really happening? Am I being punked? Is…is that student really not going to calm down?”
Since Virginia Tech, our campus (and most others I know of) have ramped up our emergency situation training and our emergency notification systems. But still there’s always an idea in the back of your mind that you’re not ever really going to need to use that training.
Plus, this outburst is just so tangential to the topic. “Why does evolution kill black people?” If I were the instructor my thought process would’ve sputtered along for a while: “Evolution kills black people? Was that the question? Does she misunderstand the process? I’ll provide more information about evolution. Wait, she’s asking the question again? What? Am I…mishearing her? Did I miss a news story? Wait, now she’s…yelling at me…” I highly doubt I would have been any quicker on my feet in that situation than the instructor was. Although I might have called for security more quickly.