A Student’s Red Flags

[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]

Students are like punctuation. Some are ellipses, the quietest and least demanding mark. Three little dots slip silently between words; those dots might disguise or invoke a library of texts. The reader will never hear those texts. The ellipsis is a finger placed across lips. “Shhh.” Some students burrow into the architecturally least noticeable spot in any given classroom. They speak only if pressed. They select only the most washed-out of vocabulary. They get their B minus or their C plus and disappear forever.

Some students are quotation marks. They are often eager to get ahead, not through the risk of breaking new ground in their own consciousness, but through imitating the successful. They are willing to say out loud or on paper only what others have said before them.

Some students are periods. They never caused any trouble. They never say or do anything interesting, either. They barely disguise their contempt. Their attitude is one of “I’m here because I want to be a cop,” or nurse or high school baseball coach or computer tech. “I already have work experience and I know I can do the job but the boss wants me to have a college degree so I’m going through the motions. I’ll jump through your hoops, but I’ll do no more than that. Period.”

The question marks! Professor Josephine K. resisted playing favorites, but in her heart of hearts, she loved them. She just wished there were more of them. Question mark students transcend the basic: who, what, when, where, why, how. They move on to new levels of curiosity. They often stay after class to chat for hours, or even show up at her apartment.

And then there were the exclamation points.

On July 13, 2024, what the press would come to refer to as a “gunman” attempted to assassinate former U.S. president Donald Trump. The so-called “gunman” missed, but he did kill Corey Comperatore, a church-going volunteer firefighter who died shielding his family from bullets.

Professor K. couldn’t bring herself to use the word “gunman.” The shooter was not a man. At 20, he was no longer a boy. What was he? He was lost. At some point he fell off the tracks that lead to adulthood and a happy and productive life as a man among his fellow man.

Few details emerged. He was slight and pale. He was intelligent. Some say he smelled unclean. Fellow students say he was bullied. Online, he searched for information on major depressive disorder as well as previous shootings. He ate alone in the high school cafeteria. Authorities say his social circle seemed limited to “his immediate family.” FBI investigators called the home where the shooter lived with his parents “something akin to a compulsive hoarder’s house.” Neighbors said the family kept to themselves. The shooter’s obese, bearded father owned fifteen guns.

The school district denies the “painful misconception” that the shooter was “relentlessly bullied.” We keep records, the district wants the world, and the world’s attorneys, to know. “The school district maintains detailed records, including academic performance, attendance, disciplinary history, and health records. According to our records, the shooter excelled academically, regularly attended school, and had no disciplinary incidents, including those related to bullying or threats.”

Prof. K. read these details for one reason. What could have helped this kid? She believed, as a matter of Biblical faith, that there was something within him – something within every human – that was not just salvageable, but the seed of goodness, had that seed been cultivated properly. There was evil, too, obviously, but evil, like cancer, can be detected and thwarted.

Prof. K. believed that any adult who interacts with young people, teachers, ministers, neighbors, doctors, nurses, politicians, school counselors, is responsible for taking action when a young person crosses his path and that young person raises red flags. Not just the Good Samaritan parable suggests this. Mandatory reporting laws require that members of certain professions report evidence of trouble in a child’s life.

What were the red flags that some adult with power should have noticed that would have resulted in a definitive intervention, thus preventing the assassination attempt, the wounding and murder, and the waste of the shooter’s own lost life?

What would Prof. K have noticed, had he been her student? His isolation was a red flag. But plenty of students are isolated and don’t go on to commit violent crimes. It wasn’t one detail, but a combination of details that raised alarms.

He was addicted to a violent YouTube channel, and he was wearing a t-shirt from that station when he committed murder. The lost boy’s favorite station, a violent gun fest site, has almost twelve million subscribers. Clearly a lot of males – probably mostly males subscribe – get their kicks from watching violent media. Violence is part of the job description for the human male.

Rather than railing against violent media that can never be erased, schools could require that males perform in healthy outlets for violent urges. Actually playing sports, rather than staring at a device, entails effort, skill, sacrifice, and physical pain. Pain teaches us something – actions have consequences. Violent media triggers the adrenaline rush that accompanies violence but that same media eliminates the pain. That’s a bad recipe.

And what to do with this detail? “His parents are both licensed counselors, according to Pennsylvania records.” This is another reminder that the very people we send our psychologically wounded students to are themselves less than perfect.

Prof. Josephine K. remembered her own student who was a giant exclamation point.

It was on the campus of a non-selective college. The class was one of the toughest she had ever taught. There were a couple of great students in the class. Carl was a young, white, dyslexic male. Carl had failed at more exclusive schools and rather than giving up he was trying again. He sat in the front row. He ignored every other student. He focused on everything she said. He improved. He passed with flying colors. He couldn’t get out of that class fast enough. He wanted a career, and this miserable class was just one stepping stone. Carl was one of those “full stop” punctuation marks.

Roberto was an Hispanic immigrant in his late twenties. He had dropped out, joined the military, finished his term, and was rejoining society, where he hoped to be wearing a white color rather than olive drab. Roberto would say, in his final paper, that Prof. K. had “kicked my butt” as much as any drill sergeant, and that he loved her for it. If all I ever did as a teacher was teach Roberto, she would later think, I’ve done well.

The rest of the class? As close to impossible as she had ever come. Students would not attend for weeks at a time, and then show up again, demanding a passing grade. Gloria, a model pretty white girl, wore low cut blouses, no bra, and a far away look. She would arrive late, if at all, sit next to lonely boys, and tease them. Once she popped up and announced to the entire class, “I just got my period!” She seemed sincerely to believe that her announcement was urgent, like a tornado warning that overrides cell phones’ “silent” status.

Students delivered well-rehearsed sob stories. Ted, a white boy, spun a tale that would have reduced a reality show audience to tears. Prof. K. googled some of their stories and discovered that the parental deaths, the tragic car accidents, the house fires all really did happen. Something bad really did happen to Ted back when he was twelve years old. But these students were, with the expertise of a cat burglar, deploying their stories to trade suffering for passing grades. Carl and Roberto had also lived through tough times. They didn’t exploit those tough times.

And then there was Jaxeer. Jaxeer was the biggest exclamation point Prof. K. had ever encountered.

Prof. K., in her memory, enumerated Jaxeer’s red flags in reverse order of magnitude. The biggest red flag was so horrific she didn’t like thinking about it; she saved thinking about it for last.

The lowest-grade red flag. The name “Jaxeer.”

She wasn’t allowed to think this, of course. She wasn’t allowed to think that a “black name” was ever a problem for anyone, anywhere, at all.

Expressing any judgment of black names for young people is “bigoted, discriminatory, prejudicial, and just plain not cool.” So argues white public school teacher Steven Singer in a 2015 essay. “When the final role [he means final roll] is taken of all America’s racists and bigots, do you really want your name to be on it?” Singer asks. Do you think parents didn’t make the best choice when naming their child after a brand of soap, sports car, perfume? Then you are going to hell.

Elise was a wealthy white woman from a desirable suburb in one of New Jersey’s, and the country’s, wealthiest counties. Her father was an attorney for a world-class celebrity. Her work at the college was merely a brief detour from her corporate career. The campus was a quick commute from her million-dollar home; part-time occupational slumming lifted her spirits. Elise loved “African American names. They are so inventive! So proud! Unlike us with our stiff, old-fashioned names!” Elise also loudly and publicly proclaimed her erotic appreciation for overweight black women with cellulite who wore minimal clothing in public. “So proud of their bodies!”

For her own body, Elise followed restrictive diets to maintain her slim shape, even in middle age. Her kids also used rigid fad diets to stay slim. Elise’s grandparents had names like “Shlomo” and “Shayna.” She named her children “Bryce,” “Paige,” and “Kyle.” Elise approved of one set of behavior for black people. She applied a different set of values to her own body and her own family. An author, Rob Henderson, calls values like this “luxury beliefs.”

In the real world, multiple studies, conducted over decades, suggest that employers, renters, and banks discriminate against applicants with black names. It would be great to wave a magic wand and make discrimination disappear but so far that magic wand has not been invented. Meanwhile, there are other ways of dealing with it. Like putting a “white name” on the resume.

In an online community where black women discuss black names, one black woman says, “I have a name that sounds, if not obviously black, definitely obviously brown, and have seriously considered having it changed, especially as I advance professionally … I have also just found out I am pregnant with my first … I would prefer a typically sounding ‘white’ name.”

Another black woman observes that black names are relatively new; excluding “white names” meant you could not name your child after ancestral heroes like Phillis Wheatley, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Shirley Chisholm, Barabara Jordan, or even Malcolm X.

Comic Dwayne Perkins delivers a gently brutal editorial in a 2018 routine. He lists his real siblings’ real black names. The audience automatically laughs. Perkins knows the audience is going to laugh at his siblings’ names. He speaks those names, anyway. He’s making a tough point about real consequences in the real world. He imagines an employer looking at a resume. “‘Lakreesha’ doesn’t sound like the name of a woman who thinks that the customer is always right.”

Perkins says that there ought to be an emergency button that hospital personnel can push. A new mother announces the name of her new baby as “Ginsenga.” The button is pushed. “Ginsenga” disappears. She is now Michelle, Perkins says, raised by a family “who will love her.”

In a 2017 Facebook post, Marlon Wayans explains, comedically, how to create a black name. Take the “baby daddy” name, the “baby momma” name, add “arbitrary capitalization” and an “unnecessary apostrophe,” and a possibly silent Q. Facebook users respond with attempts at wit, for example, “i think i like Funtaqua and Shanquantayfuniqua.” Others dig deeper. “Marlon is just saying what the rest of the world thinks.”

Prof. K. knew that the world laughs at unusual names, and that that laughter is normal. Insisting that people not laugh at the unusual is what is abnormal.

Prof. K.’s people had names that could make black names sound like the next heir to the British throne. One uncle was named Mieczyslaw. In America, he used “Matthew.” Szymankiewicz was dropped entirely. Impoverished immigrants arriving with just the clothes on their backs and headed for coal mines didn’t need any more trouble than they already had. Recognizing that English spelling and phonology could not accommodate her name, Prof. K. used both an altered first and last name.

Her grandparents’ grandchildren had names like “Joseph” that could go either way – “Jozef” or “Joe.” Their great grandchildren, with names that could only be WASP, like “Melanie” and “Marnie,” didn’t even know the name of their great grandmother’s birthplace – Slovakia. And they, like every other American, would laugh at “Szymankiewicz.” They traded their identity, the great music, tasty soups, and inspirational struggles, for financial success, and they felt no regret.

Prof. K. knew from experience that her superiors would begin laughing automatically at any anecdote including a student named “Jed” or “Becky Sue.” In fact, if a teacher forgot a student’s name, and wanted to amuse his hipper colleagues at the staff meeting, he might invent an anecdote about some “dumb-ass” “fundamentalist” questioning evolution. Even though there are vanishingly few “Jethros” or “Ellie Maes” in New Jersey, the hip professor would invent a student with a Southern accent and a Southern name and everyone would laugh and no one would fear going to hell.

Prof. K. recognized the name “Jaxeer” as the first red flag. In one of the first decisions that would matter for the rest of his life, someone had saddled a baby with a name that would unnecessarily roughen his road.

The second red flag was something Prof. K. was also not supposed to notice, not supposed to mention, not supposed to worry about. Jaxeer was obese. A Woke person would recognize one pertinent fact from the previous sentence. Prof. Josephine K. was “fatphobic.” It isn’t okay, any more, to feel sad when witnessing an obese young person. Because any discomfort we feel around obesity is evidence of bigotry.

We aren’t supposed to know or care that obesity in childhood almost always condemns a young person to a lifetime of obesity. The young body adjusts itself to being obese and tells the mind to eat more and more and more in order to maintain obesity. Childhood obesity predisposes the young person to a witch’s brew of potential impacts: diabetes, heart and lung disease, increased risk of cancer, increased morbidity, premature death, premature decay of the musculoskeletal system, liver disease, depression, poverty, and, in some cases, suicide.

Black and Hispanic young people have the highest obesity rates in the U.S. – about 25%, according to the CDC. Black adults suffer more than whites and Asians from a slew of obesity-related illness including diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and cancer. Asian kids are only nine percent obese. Asian Americans have the longest life spans. The higher obesity rates and higher obesity-related disease rates among blacks is a reflection of culture. Culture can be changed. These black and Hispanic kids could be saved from ill health and premature death. Someone has to take a definitive stand and be brave enough to say that it’s better for kids not to be fat, and responsible adults should intervene when kids are fat.

Jaxeer was shaped like a basketball, He could hardly move. He was a teenager, about average height, and he weighed in the neighborhood of three hundred pounds.

Prof. K. made it a point to be alert, to notice if he sent up any signs that he was open to talking about his health with her, or if he was open to talking about anything with her. A conversation about a sports star he admired, or a movie he liked, might open the door to deeper conversations. She had to wait for this, because there were no resources on campus dedicated to helping obese kids. There were, on the other hand, a plethora of doors students could knock on to meet with carefully trained professionals whose job it was to inform students that they were victims of racism, and let them know how to file lawsuits, ruin careers, protest.

Jaxeer’s hoodie was the next level up of red flag. And, again, the hoodie was something she must never notice. She was a “white woman.” “White woman” is what anthropologists call an “exonym.” An “exonym” is a label invented by outsiders to name, and perhaps denigrate, an alien group. “Karen” is an exonym. Prof. K. would never call herself a “white woman.” She was Slavic, Catholic, working class, a Jersey Girl, and very proudly and gratefully American. But those who have the power to decide what name you are called decided she was a “white woman,” and as such she would never be allowed to note Jaxeer’s hoodie as a red flag. Only racists have a problem with hoodies. Trayvon Martin wore a hoodie. Muslim activist Linda Sarsour claimed that her hijab was her hoodie. Wicked whites hate hoodies because whites are racist.

It is taboo to mention that hoodies obscure the face and the outline of the head, neck, and shoulders. That’s why some like hoodies – wearing one is like being hugged. Hoodies limit the vision of those wearing them and those observing those wearing them. Hoodies shut out the world.

Jaxeer wore a hoodie to class every day. Prof. K. did not notice because she was a “racist” “white woman.” She noticed because she was a teacher.

The next red flag was Jaxeer’s isolation.

Prof. K. noticed how isolated her students were. It was one of the biggest changes from her generation to the generation she taught. She was a Catholic baby boomer. If she had wanted to play, as a child, she didn’t need to make phone calls; her parents rarely let her use the phone. She didn’t need to send a text; texts didn’t exist. She didn’t make a “play date.” All she had to do was walk into the street in front of her house. Kids. Lots of them. Chalking the asphalt with hopscotch patterns. Playing catch, tag, hide-and-seek. Swimming in the river. Climbing in the trees. Collecting rocks and feathers and road kill. Kids slept over each others’ houses. Doors weren’t locked. You were always next to, accommodating, taking care of or being taking care of by, beating up on or making up with, other human beings.

Her students seemed almost allergic to other human beings. They avoided eye contact. They clung to their phones. They resisted saying another student’s name. When she spoke to one student, it was as if a switch were turned off. They exempted their consciousness from class. “She’s not talking to me; none of this matters.” Paying attention to what two other people were saying, anticipating that they could contribute to others’ conversations, was not part of their skill set.

Prof. K. knew that breaking down this isolation was a key part of her teaching. From the first day of the semester, she made students talk to each other one-on-one, address each other by name, and also to stand up and speak in front of the entire class. “A bit louder. Speak from your solar plexus. That’s right here,” she indicated on her own torso. “Face us. Look at us. Everybody, look at Tom. Not at me. At Tom.” And of course the magic sentence, “What he is saying may be on a quiz.” She had to do something to convince them that listening to Tom mattered.

Prof. K. loved watching connections form. These strands of human networking were always gendered. Suddenly two guys who had never looked around the room before boisterously high-fived each other. Why? There had been some significant sports victory the day before. One student had noticed that another student wore the hat or t-shirt of a winning team. The guys bonded over sports talk, movie talk, maybe song talk. When they finally started to connect with each other, they rose from the hunched-over-the-phone posture. They threw their backs against their seats and spread their legs. They faced the front of the room, even while talking to each other. They announced that this or that athlete or sports team was great. You like LeBron James; I like LeBron James; we can be friends.

Girls were more face-to-face, more intimate. They moved their chairs to get closer. They talked to each other about relationships, heartbreaks, family. They shared goodies from their purses: fingernail polish, snacks. They shared photos from their phones.

Jaxeer was the most alone student Prof. K. had ever taught. The class was crowded. He sat next to others. He may as well have been on the moon. He never talked to anyone. No one talked to him. He kept his hoodie up and the hoodie walled off his face.

Great. So she could go to a counselor on campus and note these red flags. “His parents gave him an unusual name. He is obese. He wears a hoodie. He doesn’t interact with other students. “You racist white woman, you must attend our anti-racism workshop” would be the only response she’d get.

Another red flag, again, listed in increasing levels of urgency. Jaxeer habitually and rhythmically moved his upper body and his hands. It’s called “stimming,” aka “self stimulatory behavior.” Everybody stims. Tapping a pen, swinging legs, drumming a table, repeating a nonsense phrase; we all use these repetitive, rhythmic behaviors to self-soothe. Ted bounced his right leg when she called on him. Jaxeer, though, stimmed just about all the time, even in the hallway before entering class. Red flag.

Jaxeer handed in no work. Jaxeer never missed a class. He also handed nothing in.

Prof. K. didn’t want to scare him off. She could see the evidence that Jaxeer was dealing with a lot. She approached him multiple times, in the hallway before class, after class, in notes sent via email. “Hey, Jaxeer, how’s it going? How was your weekend?” If she could initiate any dialog, on any topic, no matter how anodyne, maybe someday they could talk about Jaxeer not handing in any work. These forays into Jaxeer’s territory never advanced beyond the moat created by his hoodie and his stimming.

Jaxeer reeked of urine. Even in noticing that, Prof. K. would be reprimanded. One mustn’t judge how students smell. The local public librarians reprimanded patrons who complained about the malodorous homeless men setting up temporary housekeeping in library common areas. To notice someone else’s body odor was “judgmental.”

And then there was the biggest red flag of all.

Jaxeer finally handed in a paper. The paper was semi-coherent. Prof. K. couldn’t figure out if Jaxeer was talking about himself or someone else; if he was talking about two people or one or more. She couldn’t be sure if the account was of a true event or fiction.

“Writing clearly is thinking clearly.” Prof. K. guessed, from Jaxeer’s paper, that he himself wasn’t clear on key aspects of his own reality. How student authors handle agency and responsibility spoke volumes about their understanding of the world. Composing a sentence that communicated who did what to whom seems like a lower-level skill. It’s not. “My father slapped me.” “I drove my car into a tree.” Students might take an entire semester before such clear expressions of agency and responsibility were possible for them.

What was clear from Jaxeer’s paper was that he was obsessed with some very bad events involving dysfunction, abuse, and self-destruction. His paper was like the teaser trailer for a horror flick. The viewer didn’t know what was in the basement, but she knew it was something really awful.

Prof. K. recognized key words, though. Sadness. Alone. Not happy. Stuck. The world is not for me. Others are happy. Why are they happy. Dirt. Lost. Crazy. Drugs. More and more just to feel better. Don’t feel better. More and more drugs. Death.

Simple sentences. But then big words: despair, immobile, doomed, suicide.

Prof. K., in a way perhaps only someone in her position could understand, kind of rejoiced. This is a smoking gun, she thought. I can take action, she thought. They’ll have to do something now, she thought.

She took the paper to her superiors. She assumed that this paper would be the spark that would ignite Jaxeer’s salvation.

“I’ll reach out to him,” LaToya, the head of the counseling department, told her.

Prof. K. waited. A week passed. She contacted LaToya. LaToya told K. that she had contacted Jaxeer and invited him to counseling, but he had declined. And there was nothing more that could be done.

Prof. K. respected and trusted LaToya. She had seen LaToya in action on tough cases. LaToya had proven herself to be a worthy student advocate, a woman of skill, training, courage, and integrity, and someone who really cared. As a black woman herself, she recognized the struggles students faced.

And LaToya could do nothing. Jaxeer’s paper had skated very close to the key statements that would have resulted in action. But he never made those key statements. There were no overt threats of harm to self or others.

Prof. K. had been working jobs like this since she was a teenager. She knew that there are things you can make happen, and things you can’t make happen, and when you can’t make them happen, you need to turn to what you can do, and there was always plenty of other things needing to get done.

Ted, who had attended only twenty percent of class sessions, and handed in only a couple of assignments, demanded a passing grade. He did remind Prof. K. of the very sad thing that happened to him when he was twelve. Ted’s pathos was genuine. Fate had handed him a bad hand. Prof. K. recognized that recording a passing grade for failing Ted would not help him in the least. Ted failed.

Gloria’s abundant beauty and icky flirtation didn’t work any magic on Prof. K. The thought of failing the same class one more time terrified her. She grabbed onto Prof. K.’s arm and begged. Prof. K. upped her demands on Gloria. Gloria, surprisingly, delivered and pulled through. She passed with the lowest possible passing grade.

Joyce, a beautiful white girl, was just a few months clean of heroin when she had entered class. She started very strong but began to fall backward as semester’s end approached and her hard work was about to result in an A grade. She threatened to end her own life. Prof. K. said, “You’re an addict, and I’m not going to play your game. I had to deal with enough of that crap with the alcoholics in my own family. As long as you are invested in life, and by life I mean, right now, passing this class, I will do anything for you. If you inch toward the edge, you are on your own.” Amazingly, that seemed to work.

No matter what Prof. K. did, nothing reached Jaxeer. He never went to the counselor. He never handed in another paper. He failed the class. He never spoke a full sentence to Prof. K. or anyone else in the class. He disappeared.

There’s one good thing about an unusual name. Unusual names are easy to Google. Jaxeer appears to be alive. He is still alone. He is still wearing a hoodie. He is still focused on death. But he’s still out there, somewhere.

Prof. K. never spoke the following truths to Jaxeer. “I love you. That’s why I’m here. I could be making more money at McDonald’s. At almost any job I could be making more money than as an adjunct professor. I’m here because I love students and I love learning and I want to do for you what my teachers, even the best of them, never did for me. And I want to do for you what my best teachers did do for me. I want to see what roadblocks, invisible to others, bar your path to your best self. I want to clear those roadblocks. Doing so gives me irreplaceable joy. Please let me do that for you.”

All Prof. K. ever said to Jaxeer were things like, “So, how was your weekend?” and “I’m concerned. Can we get together for a bit after class and talk about your final grade?” and “You failed.”

Jaxeer never knew that Prof. K. thought about him every day of that semester. Jaxeer would never know that Prof. K. would think of him for years after their encounter. Prof. K., in all this rumination, never came up with the answer. The closest she could come was to revisit her childhood hometown. It was interventionist. Her own father had an inkling about a neighbor. Her father, who never visited anyone, walked over to the neighbor’s house, opened one of those never-locked doors, and discovered that the neighbor was about to commit suicide. Her father, himself an imperfect man, for whom English was a second language he always spoke imperfectly, sat and talked with the neighbor for hours. The wife told that story for years. “Your father saved my husband’s life.” Nowadays, the doors were all locked, and they might call the cops on you if you tried to get in.

Her hometown was judgmental. People judged each other. “That’s wrong.” You saw something wrong, and you took action. She remembered neighbors who saw her doing some bad thing, and called her parents. Goodbye bad thing. Nowadays, you couldn’t judge. The overwhelming smell of urine from a teenage boy’s body was not to be noticed or discussed.

Her hometown was not invested in identity politics. Most people were white, many were recent immigrants. Some were black. A black parent was as likely as a white parent to yank aside a misbehaving kid – white or black – and give them a good talking to. Nobody said, “You can’t say that because you are white / black / Catholic / Jewish / Italian / Ramapo Mountain People.” If someone was being a jerk, you said, “Hey, stop being a jerk,” and nobody called you racist. Everybody was American.

She’s grasping at straws. The only thing she knows is you’ve gotta pay attention to the red flags.

Danusha Goska is the author of God Through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery