For some students, college is a place of opportunity, challenges and a bright future. For a rare few, college is a place of stress, anger, violence and a loss of reality.

Tuesday marks the 10-year anniversary when former Iowa State computer science graduate student Dale Royer, 26, forced his way into the Ames home of his computer science professor, Deepinder Sidhu. He cut the telephone wires, poured diesel fuel on the living room floor and ignited it.

Inside that home was Sidhu’s slumbering family: sons Ravinder, 7, Harjit, 12, and Manjit, 25; daughter Navjit, 10; a cousin, Balbir Hans, 23; the family’s grandfather, Narain, 73, and Sidhu’s wife, Randir.

The family escaped, but Ravinder and Harjit died hours later from smoke inhalation.

* At the University of Iowa on a fall November day in 1991, the top doctoral student in physics and astronomy from China, Gang Lu, walked up to the third floor of Van Allen Hall where a physics seminar was being held. In a deadly shooting spree, he took the lives of his adviser, a student colleague, a professor, the department chairman and the associate vice president of the university. His only surviving victim was a student who is now paralyzed. That same day, Gang Lu took his own life.

* At Central Missouri State University on an early day in April of 1993, an instructor and media law specialist, David Eshelman, 56, left his home as he did every morning.

Only this time when he went outside to his garage he was met by a gunshot to the head. His wife found him on the driveway within the next couple of hours, and shortly after being taken to a hospital, he died.

The attacker was a student of his, Donald J. Ory, 24, a senior in public relations, who later killed himself in jail.

* At San Diego State University on an August day of this year, engineering student Frederick M. Davidson hid a handgun in a first aid kit in the classroom where he would later return for a review of his master’s thesis.

When he entered, Davidson was greeted by a professor, then he went to the first aid kit, pulled the gun out and began his killing quest of an assistant professor and two associate professors on the thesis committee.

Two of the professors ran for cover but Davidson chased them down and repeatedly shot at their crouched bodies. When police arrived to arrest Davidson, he told them to shoot him. He finally dropped the gun before being arrested.

These incidents — though rare, officials say — are real-life horror stories on college campuses. Due to similar incidents from coast to coast, a majority of major universities is setting up programs to take precautions.

ISU has such a program.

Loras Jaeger, director of the ISU Department of Public Safety, said the department has a year-old threat-assessment team which is part of the critical Response Team in the department. The team strives to prevent situations like those detailed above. The threat assessment team consists of ISU faculty and staff who monthly review threatening complaints made by members of the ISU community.

“It came from a desire to make campus as safe as possible,” Jaeger said.

He said DPS takes complaints from professors and staff about students into careful consideration.

“If [professors] are involved in a situation in which they feel uncomfortable I would encourage them to talk to us,” Jaeger said, “because there are plenty of people on campus that can help.”

Since she came to ISU more than a year ago, Dean of Students Kathleen MacKay said there have been only a handful of complaints made by professors about students who threaten them. But she said one is too many to ignore.

MacKay, who has served on the team, said the threats usually turn out to be nothing serious. If it’s a more serious threat, “we try and figure out the situation.”

A sign of our time

“I think our society has changed over the past decade. Campuses can’t think we are exempt from [violence] … We like to think we’re a safe haven, but that’s not always the case,” MacKay said.

Ames Police Chief Dennis Ballantine said it’s common for people to be more aware of such violence on campus.

“It’s kind of a sign of our time,” Ballantine said. “People are more willing to turn to violence.”

Just before the Sidhu’s children were killed, professors had shrugged off the threats of students. After the Royer incident, however, Ballantine said professors started paying a little more attention.

Today, some ISU professors say they have never felt uneasy around their students. But several have.

Harrington Brearley, a computer science professor emeritus at ISU who retired last year after 30 years of teaching, said, “It’s extremely unusual for a student to get so worked up — to attack a professor.”

Brearley said he cannot recall ever being threatened by a student or feeling uneasy about a student’s actions.

ISU economics professor Roy Adams, however, who taught from 1972-95 and is currently on leave, can recall a situation in which he was confronted by a student in an uncomfortable manner.

“Thinking back, years and years ago, I had a student who didn’t like my policy about make-up exams. He missed an exam without telling me. He came in and assumed since he was a state legislator, he could [get by without taking it].

“I told him the usual rules apply to him. He told me he worked on the railroad crew … He was trying to threaten me with physical violence.”

Adams decided not to let the student get to him, even though he didn’t know if he would be attacked from across the table.

“I told him I worked on highway construction,” Adams said. “Then, we sort of sat there and stared at each other … a non-violent resolution — fortunately.”

It’s kind of like an occupational hazard, he said. “You don’t think being a professor is a hazardous duty.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported in 1993 that out of 2,400 colleges in the United States, more than 7,500 violent crimes in a two-year period (1991, 1992) were reported by two- and four-year institutions.

Because of the Student Right To Know and Campus Security Act of 1990, colleges were required by federal law to make these reports public beginning in September of 1992.

Every three years new statistics are compiled.

Out of those 7,500 violent crimes, there were 30 murders. In Iowa, there were five recorded murders which include those of the faculty and staff killed by Gang Lu at the University of Iowa in 1991. All violent crimes, such as the murder statistics, include those of the entire college community, not just professors or students.

Dr. Terry Mason, psychologist and director of the ISU Student Counseling Center, said that occasionally his agency will hear concerns from professors who will call and say, “Gee, this student said this. What do you make out of it?”

“It’s hard to crawl up in their minds,” he said. Whatever the reason, “these students feel like it’s ruined their life … There’s an incredible amount of anger and rage [in them], a loss of a sense of reality.”

Violence as a solution?

* ISU student Dale Royer had been angry with Sidhu because he had given him an incomplete grade, although Royer had a year to complete the work.

* Gang Lu had believed the University of Iowa engineering department was against him, and he was insulted by the department’s questioning of his doctoral thesis, as well as a colleague who excelled above him. He called the officials refusal to do anything about the “unfair treatment” a university-wide cover-up. But officials said the complaints were not valid.

* Donald J. Ory, the Central Missouri State public relations student who killed his law professor, David Eshelman, apparently believed Eshelman wasn’t going to pass him in his media law class. He knew he would have to pass it to graduate.

* San Diego State engineering student Frederick Davidson had been offended that his thesis would be questioned. Reviewing it a second time was apparently a common procedure.

The meaning of an irrational act

Sidhu didn’t know why Royer acted out in violence.

He told the Des Moines Register at the time of his boys’ deaths that he hadn’t even spoken to Royer for several months.

“He had just as many courses from other faculty members as me,” he said. “He had no more difficulty with the courses he took from me than any of my other American students.”

Some students tend to take things more seriously than others, says Dr. Gerald L. Stone, psychologist and director of the University Counseling Service at the University of Iowa.

Gang Lu certainly took his college career, and especially his doctoral thesis seriously, he said. “He didn’t think he was accorded the respect he deserved.”

Like ISU’s Mason, Stone believes the cause of some students’ violent outbursts is something doctors may never know. “I think there is a need that we all have to come to the meaningfulness of an irrational act,” he said. “I really don’t know why he did it.”

Stone said the stress of the environment is a factor and students need proper resources to cope.

Royer said the answer was simple: setting fire to Sidhu’s home.

He told the court at his sentencing: “The idea of hurting others simply to get back at an associate of theirs seems disgusting. I dislike hurting people or seeing other people hurt … This is not to say I am not bothered by people or wholly not responsible of people who make other lives miserable. If truth be respected, sending me to prison for life is a blasphemy to the concept of justice in this country.”

Royer was sentenced to two life sentences with no chance of parole, and an extra 25 years for an arson charge.

But for Sidhu, who is now at the University of Maryland, justice may just be a meaningless word.

He finds the incident too painful to discuss 10 years later.

“It’s not going to bring my boys back” he told the Register after the deaths. “The pain from this is not going to go away just because they caught someone.”

Solutions?

Barry McCroskey, assistant hospital administrator for the ISU Veterinary Teaching Hospital, has recently reflected about violent situations between professors and students as well as violence on campuses in general.

Writing a letter to the editor of the Iowa State Daily, he expressed his feelings about how serious this is for universities and how officials need to take these accounts seriously.

He said DPS officers should carry guns in case a violent outbreak happens on campus.

Although McCroskey doesn’t teach a class, he is an ISU staff member and interacts with students frequently. He has never felt threatened by a student but he said it is “fiction” to believe campuses are completely safe from such violence.

“Whether we like it or not, [campus] is not always safe,” he said. “It’s a nice thought to think they are.” The professor-student incidents are “fortunately rare, but it is something colleges need to be aware of … None of us on campus are immune to this sort of thing. We can’t think it won’t happen to us.”

But ISU President Martin Jischke said the university is equipped to handle those rare outbreaks of student-to-instructor violence.

“We have a very fine Department of Public Safety.”

Jischke said ISU administrators have discussed details about what precautions they would take if a student acted out in a threatening manner, possibly with violence.

However, “ISU is a very healthy community in which we see very little of this kind of [threatening behavior],” he said.

“I think people here respect one another.”