When I blogged on this incident — in which the expulsion seemed to be triggered by a creative writing paper, coupled with a violation of university rules (but not state law) related to keeping licensed guns in a parked car on campus — I wrote, “Troubling, if this account is reasonably complete. It’s hard to tell more without learning about the context, including whether the student had some misconduct in his background, or otherwise showed himself to be a serious threat. But this does seem to merit some more looking into, especially since we’re not just talking about the university’s investigating a student (which I think officials must have a lot of flexibility to do), or even temporarily suspending him, but expelling him altogether.”
Well, the account turns out not to have been reasonably complete, and making it more complete makes me much less troubled. Becky Dale points to this article that reports, “Not only was there the previous high school essay, but Barber has a recent conviction for being drunk in public and also was charged with assault and trying to break into another student