Tips for getting off wait list

Q: In light of the fact that it appears that Seung-Hui Cho showed signs of mental illness before arriving on the Virginia Tech campus and long before the massacre there, what can high schools and colleges do to help prevent another tragedy?

A: In terms of weeding out people who are a danger to others and not admitting them to their college or university, admissions officers stand on very precarious ground. Many large public universities, including Virginia Tech, focus "almost entirely on a student's academics," according to a recent USA Today article by Mary Beth Marklein. "Essays and recommendation letters are optional." However, even if essays and recommendations were required, it would be extremely difficult to pick out the next campus danger based on these documents.

Additionally, Marklein writes, "federal privacy laws prohibit colleges from asking students about their mental health and high school guidance officials from disclosing it."

"Counselors once could raise red flags in their recommendation letters, but that changed when more counselors started getting threatened with lawsuits from parents. Now it's often 'what's not said' in recommendations that matters most," says Diane Freytag, director of counseling and advising at the Overlake School in Redmond, Wash.

One possible solution for colleges is to require an interview with applicants. Although this is virtually impossible for larger universities, Joyce Smith, executive director of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, says, "You learn a lot about kids when you meet with them face to face. If they can't make eye contact and don't have social skills, would that child be successful on your campus?"

One of the most extreme and controversial measures taken by a university in the days after the Virginia Tech shootings, occurred at the University of Northern Colorado. Officials there took the university's "persona non grata list and put it online with photos whenever they were available," according to a recent insidehighered.com article.

"Having such a list is common, and typically it would be distributed to campus police or those monitoring entrances to buildings or other facilities." What makes this action by Northern Colorado so controversial is that they are now making this list available to the public. Additionally, many of the people on the list claim that "they were never accused of violence and don't deserve to be publicly identified in this way." For example, Brittany Bethel, one of those on the list with a photograph, has been quoted in the Denver Post as saying that she apparently violated the university's ban on being a danger to herself because she suffered from anorexia and collapsed on campus last year, requiring hospitalization.

In other words, although Northern Colorado is simply trying to make its campus a safer place, there may be harmless people that have now been publicly punished.

http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/article/2007-5-5-05-05-07-katz
Reprinted by permission, Palo Alto Daily News. Jason Katz ©5.5.2007 All rights reserved. This article may be printed for your personal use, but may not be reprinted in whole or in part in any publication or website without permission. www.jkatzcollegecounseling.com