I had not gone to Pat when he was so ill. I would not make the same mistake with my father. I forced myself to put Pat aside so I could be with my father on three separate trips to Santa Monica the second year after Pat’s death. While there, long talks with my brothers and Dad influenced me greatly. They put the responsibility squarely on Pat. I was relieved of some guilt but not convinced. After my dad’s funeral, I revisited where I left off before he became so ill. I allowed myself to retrace my roll, Pat’s participation, and the influence of his friends. Who was in the best position to understand him? The mental finger pointed back at me. I had had the most complete picture. It was an open and shut case. I knew he wasn’t happy, and I didn’t go to him. The problem then was what to do with that information. No answer presented itself.
Then Virginia Tech happened. It was eerily similar. The questions I had asked myself for over a year were now constantly on the news. Why didn’t anyone see it coming? Why didn’t the school do more? How should they handle depressed students on campus? It was almost entertaining to watch them struggle, and not surprisingly, they didn’t come up with much except that Seung-Hui Cho’s mental record was over looked when he bought the gun.
Not a factor in Pat’s case.
So what were the factors?
About the same time that I refocused on them after my dad’s funeral, Lauren Schneider sent me Stanford president John Hennessey’s open letter proclaiming a reassessment of psychological services on campus. He also asked that everyone be more aware, more alert for signs that someone needs help.
Finally, in the aftermath of the worst mass murder ever on a college campus, the decades old student right to privacy, so guarded by college administrations, was beginning to crack. Colleges now felt a responsibility to protect their student bodies over the rights of an individual. They needed to know, and communicate when students became a danger to themselves and others.
But along with that, they kept a wary eye on when this communication was a violation of privacy, including doctor-patient privilege. And then what action they would take? Wouldn’t restrictions against the mentally ill be considered discrimination, especially if no crime had yet been committed? Would restraining orders be issued against suspected murderer-suicides?
As illusive as these answers were, Cho’s incomprehensible aggression caused a paradigm shift in the hands-off policy imposed by schools and tolerated by parents because of the Buckley Amendment in 1974, which proclaimed our newly emancipated college students’ privacy inviolate. No matter what. During Pat and Lib’s four years at Stanford and the University of Vermont, for example, we were denied information on applications and transcripts. We could not receive grades or tuition bills until they signed waivers. We couldn’t find out the amount of Libby’s bills from the UVM Health Center. They couldn’t acknowledge that she was a patient (Well, let’s say hypothetically, I told the receptionist, if she were a patient, and her doctor wanted to get paid, he would need to tell me the amount. No problem, she said, and promptly gave me the figure). We couldn’t help with roommate problems or dormitory overcrowding. At UVM Libby was stashed with two others in a room meant for two, and I do mean stashed. She could hardly move or find peace and quiet. By the second semester, both roommates had dropped out and Lib moved to another double. The best answer from the school was a $700 refund, the difference in cost between a double and a triple.
But now, after Cho, media discussion shifted the balance of rights toward parents. Maybe we couldn’t get tuition bills (until they were past due because Pat and Lib forgot to mail them), but we weren’t going to tolerate unsafe campuses. I decided to pass on a few of these thoughts to Dr. Hennessey. I wrote him an open letter, which James Hohmann, Editor in Chief of the Stanford Daily, generously published in its entirety on May 14, 2007. I include the link for Dr. Hennessey’s deliberation:
http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2007/5/4/opedHennessyReflectsOnTragedy
and then my letter and the responses, some of which were highly critical, accusing me of “nannyism”:
file:///Users/Pat/letter%20to%20Hennessey/opedAnOpenLetterToPresidentHennessy.html
No comments:
Post a Comment