Risks of repressing students for 'writing' violence

The creative writing faculty of America's Virginia Tech university has new guidelines for teachers to use when assessing students' work.

"Is the work expressly violent?" they are asked. "Do characters respond to everyday events with a level of violence one does not expect or may find even frightening? Is violence at the centre of everything the student has written?"

Similarly, in colleges all across the US, teachers are now asked to inspect creative writing for violent tendencies and to guide authors of such work toward counseling and even medication.