For a brief moment in March 2006, it seemed possible Seung-Hui Cho might stand among Virginia Tech's best and brightest.

After the stalkings of fellow students and run-ins with faculty, after his overnight stay in a mental hospital -- after a semester that ended with everything apparently coming apart -- there he was, listed among the presenters at the 22nd Annual Research Symposium and Exposition.

Put on by the Graduate Student Assembly, it was a combination showcase of student efforts and campus contest. It was an annual event with cash prizes for those who impressed a panel of faculty judges.

The event's program tells the tale: Among the work presented at the then-new Graduate Life Center, amid "Nutritional and economic impacts of a pastured based beef system" and "Trypan blue staining of mips1-2 mutant in Arabidopsis" is an entry from the 22-year-old who a year later would kill 32 of his classmates and teachers, then himself.

It is a poem titled "Spear me down, Heaven."

The violent subject matter is in line with other Cho writings that have become public since the April 16 shootings.

But that Cho applied to be part of an event where he would have to speak in public seems to challenge the standard portrayal of a silent recluse diagnosed with "selective mutism" or other mental disorders.

Whether he applied by himself or was encouraged to apply by others is not clear. And it is not certain if he actually showed up for his 10-minute slot on the "lecture presentation schedule" printed in the program.

Memories have faded in the year and a half since the symposium, and contacted this week, neither organizers nor seven students on the lecture schedule recalled if Cho was present.

Joshua Sweeney, who won a prize after reading his poem "The Logician" about the futility of denying the existence of God, knew Cho and did not see him. Sweeney was in several classes with Cho and said he always seemed studious to him -- "When people would banter, he would roll his eyes at it," Sweeney said.

Julia Best had the lecture presentation slot immediately following Cho. She said she arrived a half-hour early to deliver her talk on black undergraduates' social and educational experiences at Tech, the subject of her doctoral dissertation.

"I just don't recall that," she said of Cho's poem. "... I do not recall a poem at all."

Laura Freeman, a graduate student who served as the symposium's chairwoman, wrote in an e-mail that it was the first event she had organized and that it went by in a blur. But she did not remember that anyone failed to appear.

On the other hand, Monika Gibson, the director of student services for the graduate school, said it would be rare for all entrants -- 137 in 2006 -- to make it.

Organized by the Graduate Student Assembly, the symposium features work that includes research posters and various sorts of performances. Students are asked to submit work about a month beforehand, and generally everyone is accepted until available slots are filled.

Cho's entry followed a semester when he had been removed from a poetry writing class and tutored by English department Chairwoman Lucinda Roy. Roy said she did not know anything about the symposium, in which Cho's poem was entered in the Advanced Undergraduate category.

The event came near the start of what seemed to be a calmer time in Cho's life.

Andy Koch shared a suite with Cho during the 2005-06 academic year. He and his father had alerted authorities in December 2005 after Cho said he might as well kill himself. Cho spent a night in a psychiatric hospital and was released with a judge's order to get outpatient care.

Koch said Cho seemed to improve afterward, but added, "Maybe he was just more careful."

There were different thoughts Tuesday about whether the poem Cho entered in the symposium revealed anything about him or about the carnage to come.

Arnold Ludwig, adjunct professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the Brown University School of Medicine, read Cho's poem Tuesday and called it "very wrenching" and "a very powerful statement."

Darker work produced by poets and writers does not necessarily reflect the author's mental state, he said. If Cho's poem "were put in the mouth of a character in a story, you would not necessarily say the author of the story is disturbed."

In his 1995 book "The Price of Greatness: Resolving the Creativity and Madness Controversy," Ludwig said people involved in creative work have more mental difficulties than do those involved in other professions. Among writers he studied, poets "who achieved greatness" were most prone to suicide.

Susan Lord, a licensed clinical social worker and an instructor at the University of New Hampshire, also read Cho's poem Tuesday.

"I would agree that a dark poem does not necessarily mean pathology, but this one looks like a cry for help to me," Lord wrote in an e-mail. "The disturbing elements are the apparent externalization of the locus of control, the self-loathing/self-destructive impulses, and the seeming lack of hope."

But was Cho a poet?

Michael Blumenthal, a celebrated poet who is now a faculty member at Old Dominion University, offered a succinct critique of "Spear me down, Heaven."

"In brief, though I hate to say it: the poem is truly awful," he wrote in an e-mail. "No, I wouldn't call it a poem."

Staff researcher Belinda Harris contributed to this report.