The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays

by Esmé Weijun Wang

Michelle tried to crawl under her desk. “All of a sudden,” she said, “my neck gets stepped on with a huge boot. And she steps on me and she puts her pepper spray right in front of my face, and she says, ‘Don’t move or I’m gonna spray you.’” Finally, Michelle was handcuffed. Despite the woman’s repeated questioning, she continued to refuse to pull up her sleeve—even as she was pinned up against a wall on the floor—even as she kicked her leg out and booted the UPD officer straight in the face. In the end, the officer took Michelle to a hospital. It was clear, in hearing all of this, that Michelle remains resentful about how she was treated by the officer who came to assess the situation. Without prompting, Michelle gave me the full name of the woman. She said, “It took me about nine years to be able to tell that story.” It isn’t clear whether the officer was given crisis de-escalation training, or any kind of training at all in dealing with mentally ill students. I can easily picture the scenario: a campus cop goes into a dorm, knowing only that a student has cut her wrist. The dormmates are whipped into chaos because of alcohol and a snowstorm and the dramatic, self-destructive behavior of one of their own.