CONSIDER JANNA Turley, a college student whose course on the American novel inspires her to take creative writing the following term, only to find that she has difficulty coming up with anything to write creatively about. She decides to rework a scene from her favorite novel. Pleased with the result, she zestfully awaits the professor’s response.

Another response comes first, a telephone call inviting her to the college’s Winthrop Center to discuss her story. She senses that this is an invitation she can’t refuse. The next morning, she is in a small room with a thirtyish woman who has introduced herself as Val. “I’m concerned about your story, Janna,” Val is saying.

“Is it so badly written?” Janna asks.

“I’m concerned about the content, Janna. Where does the story come from?”

“I reworked the drowning scene in An American Tragedy. I expected the professor to recognize it. I never thought I could be accused of plagiarism.” Janna also never thought that the college’s writing-skills center would be where they dealt with plagiarism. But this hardly seems the time to say that.

Val assures Janna that no one is accusing her of plagiarism. The concern is with all the violence in the story.

“That’s what makes the story exciting.”

“You feel that violence is exciting,” Val says, and Janna realizes something she feels ridiculous for not having realized all along: She isn’t in the writing-skills center. That’s the Lathrop Center. The Winthrop Center is the counseling center. It is hard to keep all the college’s centers straight. “With all the centers, where’s the periphery?” she likes to say, but this hardly seems the time to say that, either.

“Lots of people feel that violence is exciting,” she says. “Why do you think violent video games and TV crime shows are so popular? If everyone who finds violence exciting gets counseling, who’ll be left to do the counseling?”

“I’m sensing a lot of anger here, Janna,” says Val.

“Of course I’m angry that the thought police are policing my writing!” Janna suspects that she sounds as tiresome as the various campus activists she makes a point of avoiding. But she doubts counselors care if you’re tiresome. They just care if you’re normal. Janna has always considered herself just offbeat enough to be intriguing. Now she starts having qualms. What if it really isn’t normal to write violent fiction, let alone add some particularly grisly details to spice up a reworking of someone else’s fiction?

“Tell me more about your anger, Janna,” Val says gently.

This scenario is imaginary. Yet conditions are ripe for it to occur. In reaction to campus suicides and murders, some colleges’ mental-health services are casting their nets very widely. At the University of Illinois, violent fiction formerly concerned counselors only if it involved a named target. Now any fiction centering on killing calls for a summons to the counseling center. Moreover, college students can scarcely avoid psychological scrutiny by avoiding creative writing courses. At Cornell, therapists ask professors to report students for such lapses as poor grades or failure to attend class.

As a professor, I like to think that I am so fascinating that skipping my classes is a psychiatric danger sign. As a former student, I see the risks of this surveillance. It can make students feel that Big Brother is watching them. It can lead them to be wary of their own individuality. It can even erode their concepts of individuality and privacy to the point where it seems natural that anyone falling short of rigid standards of wholesomeness and diligence should be targeted for a mental makeover. It can undermine the idea of college as a place for thinking freely, experimenting and developing original perspectives.

Where should colleges draw the line between neglecting students who need help and intruding on those who do not? The answer is unclear. Yet it can be clear when a college goes too far. At the very least, colleges should differentiate between fantasy and reality. They should not target students on the basis of violence in their fiction. Such targeting threatens not only to stifle the gory thrillers that many harmless people enjoy but also to stifle the great literature that centers on killing. Suppose that Richard Wright and Theodore Dreiser had been caught in the counseling net during their formative years. Would they have been counseled away from writing Native Son and An American Tragedy? That would truly have been an American tragedy.

Felicia Nimue Ackerman, a monthly contributor, is a professor of philosophy at Brown University.