Enrolling in a Ph.D. program does not a doctoral candidate make

I've seen press reports where the alleged Colorado Movie Theater killer was referred to as a "Doctoral Candidate."

Merely enrolling in a Ph.D. program does not make one a "candidate."

The rules vary somewhat across disciplines and countries, but basically, you need to pass your "admission to candidacy", or, A-exams, in the your fields of specialization within your chosen discipline. To get to the point where you can take your As, you need to pass a series of qualifying exams, or Qs.

All indications are that this alleged murderer did not pass any such exams.

Don't look at the institutions where he was enrolled to understand why this happened. They like to keep quiet about students' disturbing mental problems, and quietly ship them elsewhere instead of alerting authorities.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 pretty much makes it impossible for involved parties to be kept in the loop when a student has mental issues.

If the professor notices some whacky tendencies, well, she can get in trouble for raising those issues. If a counselor is treating a student who talks about delusional and violent fantasies about his/her classmates, nobody can really tell the professor or the students without getting in trouble for violating the student's "privacy".

So, sometimes you notice that a student left a back-pack under his desk when he asked to go to the bathroom. Only, it's been half an hour since he left, and he is not in the only men's room in the building. There are close to 100 students in the auditorium. You know the student has been having "issues" because you personally observed them. What do you do?

Just like with terrorism, these are important questions which we need to think about rationally. On the one hand, overly paranoid professors and administrators can ruin a student's career on the basis of just one event brought out about a confluence of stressful conditions. On the other hand, if the student decided to pack his backpack with anti-personnel explosives, well, goodbye to a bunch of us in that auditorium.

The unfortunate truth is that if someone decides to kill a bunch of people in a particularly violent fashion in a place and at a time when it is least expected, there is very little the rest of us can do to prevent it.

We should be grateful that there were police officers nearby when this attack started, for, in the absence of armed resistance, he would have had a field day walking around the facility, taking people out.

My condolences to everyone who lost loved ones. Unfortunately, I have had the experience of losing loved ones in the most sudden and unexpected ways, so I can sort of relate to the sense of utter void they must feel now.

FÂTİHA

Bismillâhirrahmânirrahîm
Hamd, Âlemlerin Rabbi, Rahmân, Rahîm, hesap ve ceza gününün (ahiret gününün) mâliki Allah’a mahsustur.
(Allahım!) Yalnız sana ibadet ederiz ve yalnız senden yardım dileriz.
Bizi doğru yola, kendilerine nimet verdiklerinin yoluna ilet; gazaba uğrayanlarınkine ve sapıklarınkine değil.

Requiem

Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.