Nikki Giovanni, as we are all now learning, is a professor of poetry at Virginia Tech. I read her poems in high school - she's one of America's leading poets. Not surprisingly, her class fills to capacity with every offering: she takes 70 students.
For anyone who has ever taken or tried to take a celebrity-taught class, you know how much students want to be in the class. I made it into former Gov. Michael Dukakis' class at Northeastern; I didn't make it into Red Sox announcer Joe Castiglione's class. Student know it's a privilege to take classes like that. So when I read that 63 of 70 students had dropped Giovanni's poetry class in Fall '05, I was shocked.
They must have been shocked too. College students aren't a squeamish bunch, by and large, but Cho Seung-Hui's compositions in Giovanni's class were violent and threatening enough that 63 out of 70 students dropped the class. Giovanni confronted Cho, forced him to leave the class and work with department head Lucinda Roy (who also felt seriously threatened by the student).
Perhaps some students tried to reach out to Cho; he doesn't seem like the type who would open up to anyone. Obviously the English Department tried to reach him. But as Giovanni admitted, "reports on Monday that the gunman was Asian left 'no doubt' in her mind who did it."
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