What Can Schools Do?

Move too quickly against a troubled student and a university can be sued. But wait too long and there can be lawsuits too

Samantha Appleton / Aurora for TIME

A state trooper at a memorial board at Virginia Tech.

In the fall of 2005, some 17 months before Cho Seung-Hui went on his killing spree at Virginia Tech, his behavior was so disturbing that his creative-writing professor had him removed from her class. Later that semester, two female students complained separately about what one called his "annoying" advances, and after an acquaintance warned that Cho might be suicidal, he was detained for several hours, evaluated at a local mental-health facility and released. "Everyone who is hospitalized isn't going to be banned from campus," Dr. Christopher Flynn, head of Virginia Tech's counseling center, told TIME....

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