English Professor Went to Dean About Killer

April 20, 2007 — -- While the nation paused to grieve with Virginia Tech today, professors at the school say they met repeatedly to talk about the troubling behavior exhibited by Seung-hui Cho. As recently as September 2006, one of them sought information from administrators about a student she believed was troubled.

Virginia Tech creative writing professor Lisa Norris wanted to know more about 23-year-old Cho from the school's associate dean for Liberal Arts and Human Sciences Mary Ann Lewis.

Norris, in an e-mail to ABC News, says Dean Lewis replied immediately, but made no mention that Cho was suffering from mental health issues, nor did she mention anything about police reports.

"My guess is that either the information was not accessible to her or it was privileged and could not be released to me," wrote Norris. She taught Cho in both Advanced Fiction Writing and Contemporary Fiction.

Lewis told professor Norris to recommend that Cho seek counseling at the on-campus Cook Counseling Center. It was something that she had already done -- as had other professors in the English department.

"It is certainly true that my creative writing colleagues and I shared information and concerns about Cho," Norris wrote. "More than one of us tried to get him to seek counseling."

Just five weeks into the fall 2005 semester, professor Nikki Giovanni asked to have Cho removed from her introductory creative writing course after female students complained that he was snapping photos of their legs under the desk with a cell phone camera. Giovanni told The Associated Press that she approached then-department head Lucinda Roy, who pulled Cho from the class.

Roy also alerted student affairs, the dean's office and Virginia Tech police -- all of whom told Roy there was little that could be done unless Cho was making clear threats.

In addition to faculty members who alerted administrators about Cho's menacing behavior, Virginia Tech police notified university officials in December 2005 when a judge issued a temporary detention order that allowed them to send Cho to an off-campus mental facility -- an order authorized after three run-ins between police and Cho in less than three weeks.