Superstar Poet Nikki Giovanni Sounds an Alarm...

I KNEW GOD IS A WOMAN BUT I DIDN’T KNOW SHE IS BLACK
Superstar Poet Nikki Giovanni sounds an alarm that is almost completely ignored.
Superstars can have self doubt even those with an abundance of fame talent and common sense. Until a couple of days ago I knew very little about poet Nikki Giovanni except that she is a highly revered African American poet. She’s part of the curriculum around these parts. I work in a college English department in Chicago, IL
I occasionally encounter crazy students and crazy people posing as students. The dean of Student Services, also an African American told me to deal with each instance with common sense. He told me that I wasn’t paid enough to deal with certain situations. Once I put up with crazy guy for at least 8 weeks until things got so bad it took 3 burly security guards to drag him out of the building. The dean told me that my department had waited much too long to deal with the problem student. Besides acting crazy, the student smelled crazy. Yes he smelled bad. It was worse than Jerry Seinfeld’s funkafied car. I do not exaggerate when I estimate that he could be smelled a block away.
The problem at Virginia Tech didn’t develop overnight. Teachers are not paid enough and students pay too much to put up with mentally ill students. Common sense and gut instinct should have won out over political correctness. Nikki Giovanni is the only one who showed at least some discernment when she insisted that Virginia Tech killer, Cho Seung-Hui be removed from her class.

From: CNN LARRY KING LIVE
Aired April 18, 2007 - 21:00 ET
KING: Now to Nikki Giovanni, who's back in Peoria, Illinois, the distinguished professor of poetry, who taught Cho (Virginia Tech killer, Cho Seung-Hui) in poetry class. What do you make when you see these things?
NIKKI GIOVANNI, POET, VIRGINIA TECH PROFESSOR: I think that the main thing that I think Larry said it was not obvious. This is all hindsight. And I think that Virginia Tech has taken a hit that we don't deserve right now because if we -- if we could have known that -- that this -- to me he was a mean boy, but I'm not a psychiatrist.
But if we -- if we could have known that he could have -- that he could or would have done this, don't you know we would have gotten rid of him?
I have four colleagues who are dead trying to stop him. One of my favorite students, Matt Laporte -- and I know that Matty died a hero because he was a great kid.
I've lost people that I care about.
Don't you think we would have stopped it if we had known it?
KING: Yes. In...
GIOVANNI: It wasn't obvious. And people are saying obvious. It wasn't obvious. It was a boy who -- who tried to intimidate people. He did ugly things. And I did, I thought he was a mean kid and I didn't want to be around him. And I did what I should do, which was tell my supervisor he's got to go or I'm going to resign.
KING: All right...
GIOVANNI: And I did that because I wanted people to know it was serious. I wanted Tech to know that it was serious.
KING: And the...
GIOVANNI: But it still wasn't obvious.
KING: In the package he sent to NBC, he put the name Ax Ishmael in the return address area.
Does that mean anything to you?
GIOVANNI: No, it does not.
KING: He never used that name...
GIOVANNI: No.
KING: ... in class or anything?
GIOVANNI: No, you know, he was monosyllabic. It was a constant battle. The reason that I decided I couldn't deal with him any longer and that I was not going to be of help to this boy is that every -- every class -- I teach the Tuesday/Thursday. He would come in with his sunglasses, come in with a cap, come in with the thing. And, you know, Einstein said that, that doing the same thing all over again and expecting different results is a sign of insanity.
And I found myself every Tuesday and Thursday doing the same thing over again...
KING: Did you...
GIOVANNI: ... and expecting a different result. So I figured one of us is nuts and it wasn't going to be me, you know?
KING: Did you fail him?
GIOVANNI: No, I did not. Actually, he -- I asked that he be taken out of my class. And I wrote a letter to my supervisor, to my department head, Lucinda Roy. And you've spoken to Lucinda. I think you spoke to him last night.
KING: Yes.
GIOVANNI: And I sent his -- his letters. I sent what he was writing, the -- what he called poetry, which was not. It was -- it was nowhere near it. It was a diatribe. And I sent all of that to Lucinda. And I said he's got to get out of my class or I've got to resign, because I cannot ask students to come into a classroom that clearly I'm not controlling.
And if I had left Seung in my class, he would have been controlling it.
KING: How, Nikki, did he get to be a senior?
GIOVANNI: I don't know, because, again, it's not obvious. We -- we are 26,000 students. There are students who commit suicide. There are students who have other problems. You can't just go plucking them out because they may do something. Some people get all right. And he obviously got under some radar -- we are learning. I am learning things now. I am a poet and so I just went on my instinct.
I don't want to be around him. I don't want...
KING: Yes.
GIOVANNI: I don't want him near me. And...
KING: You made a smart move.
GIOVANNI: And I'm not saying that I was right.
What if he had graduated and become something really wonderful and all of a sudden he's got a Nobel Prize and it's like yes, and Dr. Giovanni kicked me out of class?
Boom. Then I've got egg on my face. I'm willing to have egg on my face.
KING: Yes.
GIOVANNI: I am. Because all I know is that something -- to me, the term would be evil, Larry. Something evil came in.
KING: Obviously.
Thank you, dear. Nikki Giovanni.

There are those who have no doubts about what happened at Virginia Tech. Someone close to me is certain that there is a stigma about admitting Mental illness within the Asian community. Others respond by asking, “How many did Timothy McVeigh kill? What about the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski? They’re not Asian. No one in their community thought there was a problem until it was too late.”
I know that writing about this and introducing an instance I experienced is anecdotal and may be considered politically incorrect and possibly offensive to some. Yet I hope that by starting this discussion, all communities will be able to accept or at least acknowledge that when a family member has a mental illness and seek help before another tragedy occurs.
Part of my job is to monitor what students print. If I didn’t the majority of the paper would be used to print celebrity images, bank statements, phone bills, plane tickets etc. In addition, some enterprising students don’t think twice about using up the college’s paper running a business or to help a religious affiliation.
One day, I noticed a lovely young Asian women printing out what appeared to be personal business letters. I told her that she needed to pay for a print card to print personal items. I knew from the print queue that she was printing out copies of the same exact letter several times. I let her have one copy of each distinct letter but and I know this is snooping—I kept copies of each that remained on the queue. I was very suspicious and I wanted to know what she was up to.
The letters were quite bizarre and paranoid. I determined from the letters that the women had registered a website that was also full of bizarre paranoid delusions. A few minutes research on the web led me to the conclusion that this was no ordinary crazy lady. She had been a highly gifted child and had won prestigious scholarly awards and had earned advanced degrees from the most prominent universities in the United States. Some of her close acquaintances and former classmates were now eminent scientific and medical professionals. Some of her bizarre ravings were directed at these people. Yet no one seemed to notice or care that she was wandering around from city to city lost, crazy and far from home.