Who knows what Tyler Molander was thinking - probably not that he was pushing envelopes, as he slid letters stamped with smiley faces under dorm rooms doors at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The same doors have since slammed into his not-so-smiling face.
Molander was asked to withdraw from his school last week after his special delivery of messages which invited whoever willing to "Cut the s---, human up, and make time" to meet at a campus dining hall and start a new club to make friends. Yet the flyering worked; the media RSVP'd, and though the friends club fell through who needs it with hundreds of Facebook friends and counting.
That digital sympathy has gone out to Molander is indicative of how everyone can relate to an alienated student whose attempt to come out of his foxhole got him blasted by a public bombshell. But one also must feel for UMass. A letter of this sort could have been the draft of a manifesto toward violence - against others or oneself - and condolences are worth nothing in hindsight.
Though at times preaching love, peace and all the rest, his letter nevertheless strikes a disturbing tone of both self-exceptionalism and genuine insight, characterizing what psychologists call delusional. Not to mention there are bona fide contradictions in the letter. Even though the letter bizarrely asks only those students who do not know Molander to join him - "Please don't come if you are acquainted with me, I apologize, but just trust me" - this clacks hard against the club's meeting logistics, for which Molander writes, "So, my best friend [emphasis added] and I are going to wait in the Blue Wall every day next week."
It was not wrong for Molander to take his endeavor so seriously, but in doing so he should have intuited the school would do likewise. Whether Molander was an alien or predator, he frightened students and faculty, and an empathetic person understands the positions of both.
Well, what side of the door is it, then? Given that Molander did not attach force to his social invitation, he should not have been asked, with force, to forego a degree for handing out his letter. And this letter seemed to carry more weight with administrators than those equally rebellious words of our Constitution's First Amendment.
Given his subsequent statement to the dean, including solipsistic hits such as "The super bowl causes mass hysteria, the super bowl causes riots" or "I do not understand why you would personally jump to conclusions that I am mentally unstable because I exhibit an emotional state that you do not understand," it is evident Molander has not learned the lessons in humility or empathy he sought in the first place. Or maybe he is a genius with all of us merely adding to his biographical fodder.
From that best friend to counselors or the English department, more resources should have been available to Molander, and in the final psychoanalysis, the responsibility for his social difficulties still falls partially on the school's doorstep. If not friends, there are plenty of resources or novels which have edified far worse and better men than Molander for some time.
But we imagine more sympathy would have been extended to this guy if he'd handed his letters out on bid night.
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