Student Making Threats Against My Daughter

TheGFG
Fri, 21 Sep 2012 17:04:30 +0000

I think 3togo is right.

My D had an experience with a fellow student freshman year whose behavior was “off” and scary to her and to others. He was the BF of her roommate, but was an older military veteran returned from Afghanistan who kept talking about buying guns. I’m not going to go into the other details of the story here, but it was also a kind of nebulous case where the man had said and done many worrisome things, but nothing really criminal. For example, my D’s best friend is Jewish, and this guy would make all kinds of anti-Semitic comments to his face.

Anyway, after one particularly disturbing episode of unstable behavior, D went to talk to the RA. The RA listened, said he understood her concern, but said there was nothing he could do. This was what D suspected would be the case, but I was worried for her safety since the guy started spending lots of time in her room, and so told her to tell the RA anyway. Several weeks later, D learned from the guy himself that a group of students had reported him for threatening speech, and school officials had met with him about it. They tried to get him to withdraw and leave school, and labeled him “a threat to the school community.” He fought it, invoking free speech protections. They succeeded in getting him to move off campus but they couldn’t expel him, and they couldn’t make him go to counseling. They did request he see a counselor, but he refused.