This article brings up a good point, at least to my mind. When I was a senior in college in 2002, a fraternity brother of mine had a similar experience as the VT killer. He would travel with one of the girl's sports teams (I can't remember if it was soccer or lacrosse, but I believe it was in the Spring) because he had a friend on team. Now, I only have his side of the story, which, as you'll see, is part of the problem. One of the girls' fathers noticed him at the games and complained to the coach that he was "stalking" his daughter. The girl, by my friend's report, didn't complain and objected later to the following events. The coach, without believing the charge, was required to forward the complaint to the university officials. The University was then had the University police, incarcerate my friend and bring him to a mental institution, where he was examined by several psychologists, who all believed he was perfectly fine. He was then examined by a University-paid psychologist who, according to my friend who claims to have seen the doctor's notes, wrote down outrageously false statements inferring to him thoughts of suicide and murder. He stayed in the hospital for a few days. When he got out, he tried to contact the girl to indicate to her that he meant no harm and she replied that 1. she hadn't complained and 2. she and the rest of the team had been warned that they were not permitted to contact him at all nor were any of them allowed to testify in his defense. He was expelled from school, though he was allowed to reapply for the following year. I lost track of him after this. He was never allowed a lawyer or the opportunity to defend himself or call his own witnesses. It was never reported in the school or city paper.

Now, he my friend was eccentric, but I don't believe he was a threat to anyone. I also don't condone mass-murder as an appropriate response to most anything. But, at the same time, I'm not sure how seriously I'd take the history of the VT killer to be exactly what we're told it is.

UPDATE: Well, I finished the article and it appears the part I was referring to was supposed to be a speculation from his point of view. At the same time, all we know is falsifiable "official" things like "restraining order" and "hospitalized" which are basically meaningless in the modern university, where eccentricity is a punishable offense, and the reactions of a few instructors who don't specialize in psychiatry. Obviously, they were right, but I'd be interested to know more whether teh alienation could have been causal or correlational. We're talking about a autist, someone with extraordinary difficulty expressing emotions to begin with.