The New Yorker had a bit in its March 22 issue about Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment students from Fairfield who spoke recently at a New York City press conference on how Transcendental Meditation can remove some of the trauma from adolescence.

I’m not surprised the reporter was favorably impressed. I interviewed MSAE students several times during a five-year stint at a Fairfield newspaper and found them, for the most part, to be poised, smart, creative and possessing a sweetness that was a stark contrast to the angst consuming many teenagers. During conversations about End School Violence Now, a student organization touting the benefits of using consciousness-based education and the TM technique to rid students of the stresses that cause violence, it was hard not to be impressed with their commitment and sense that if not them, then whom? Their collective optimism balanced my reporter’s skepticism about the effectiveness of their proposed solution.

That unfailing optimism is a cornerstone at Maharishi University of Management and MSAE, the private K-12 school, both of which were founded on the teachings of Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It’s charming on one hand because it speaks to a belief in the goodness of people, yet alarming in its real-world naivete. Some people in Fairfield are saying that optimism recently cost an M.U.M. student his life.

The university failed to notify authorities when a student allegedly stabbed another with a ballpoint pen in class, citing its policy to handle such matters internally. The accused student, for whom the university had made arrangements to fly home, slipped away from the protective custody of university officials and allegedly stabbed another student to death in the cafeteria.

As a former observer of life in Fairfield, I’ve been inundated with questions from people, many of whom can scarcely conceal their glee at seeing violence erupt on a campus that promotes itself as non-violent. I’m not a fan of M.U.M., but neither am I a detractor. I recognize the difference between the TM movement and the people who practice the technique to bring clarity, restfulness and harmony to their lives. In many respects, the university meditators and community meditators are polar opposites.

So I thought carefully about my response to the Fairfield jabs. As targets of cheap shots go, M.U.M. is too easy. The university brings some of that on itself by declaring that historic buildings put off bad vibes and bulldozing them down, and claiming that groups of roughly 8,000 people (or the square root of 1 percent of the world’s population) meditating together can create peace. Be those assertions right or wrong, convincing others of their merit isn’t something that easily happens in Fairfield, where Eastern mysticism meets Western fundamentalism.

That same sweetness that’s seen in the students The New Yorker wrote about may have been behind university officials’ decision not to alert law enforcement authorities after the student’s first alleged violent outburst. There was a practicality to the decision, an assumption, perhaps, that a mental health crisis, not criminal intent, prompted the attack and, therefore, mental health professionals, not an over-burdened criminal justice system, were best suited to respond.

It’s easy to both respect and applaud that. But having made that decision, M.U.M. should have done as the police would have done and isolated the student and stationed around-the-clock guards if necessary. “They needed to do more than just meditate on it,” someone told me. A cheap shot? Probably. But there was some truth to it. I’m betting that topic didn’t come up at the press conference in New York.

Business Publications Corp. Editorial Director Beth Dalbey can be reached by e-mail at bethdalbey@bpcdm.com.