Week 7: An unprompted response to active shooters on campus

This topic was recently posted on the WPA listserv. One participant's observation was this:

"The difference between us and other professions is, of course, that we are the ones teaching rhetoric and persuasion. Is our profession shifting to something else, under the gun, as it were?

To me there is always that tension between those who feel that words have effects and that situations are resolvable by talk to the other end of the spectrum where all can only be 'solved' by weapons.  There are any number of claims and warrants for either view and stages on the spectrum from the one extreme to the other.

In dealing with the physical acts of 'preparedness' it is easy to miss the ideological subtext.  Fifteen or twenty years ago, teachers did not come to class each day thinking preparedness' thoughts.  How does this change us?"

In full disclosure, I spent most of my childhood afraid of the world around me. After a near-death experience at 8, I had yet to grasp the value of life. I became a silent observer. I fully believed I wouldn't live past my 26th birthday because the world was such a scary place. These perceptions were formed by my environment. My mother's brother, a risk-taker, had died in a motorcycle accident some years earlier. In junior high, we were taught to hide under our desks and not to wear metal jewelry, for in a nuclear attack these things would melt into our bodies. Society teaches us to live in fear, but it does not teach us to live.

The short version of my story is that there came a time when I had to conscientiously decide whether I was going to walk through my life afraid or whether there was another path for me. September 11, 2001 was the day I decided I'd be a risk-taker and that I must live life to its fullest each day, for we have no idea when our time is up. More importantly, within reason, we have little control over the time our number comes up. Active shooters on campus force so many numbers to be called. It's frightening to think this could happen to any one of us at any time. My mother lives in Oregon state not too far from the recent happening of the UCC campus. In recent conversation with her I asked what I should do in response to her disbelief and fear -- Should I choose a "safer" profession than university student/professor? Should I train my composition students how to respond to an active shooter scenario? A friend of mine recently took a position as president of a college not too far from the UCC campus. I don't know how to even open the conversation with him on the topic of having responsibility for such a horrific possibility. Does the prospect eat away his stomach lining and raise his blood pressure? How do we live in this society?

Returning to the fall of 1999 when I had put my oldest daughter into a public school a few months after the Columbine massacre. The first time her kindergarten class went into practice lockdown, I went into real shock. Are our children really in so much danger? I questioned my parenting decision to place her in such a potentially dangerous situation. Since, life dealt me more life-threatening situations. I know first hand death is not a prospect I can easily look in the face. I avoid rather than embrace death. However, I cannot live my life in fear. A few years ago, in a composition pedagogy course, I sat among my peers and a trusted instructor. A representative from the sheriff's department walked into the room clapping his hands together loudly, repeatedly. "This is gunfire. How do you react?" As he continued to simulate gunfire and present various scenarios, I began to sob uncontrollably. I had been in a similar situation not long before -- not on a campus, not the same situation, at home -- in a place where I was supposed to not only feel safe, but where I was supposed to be safe. When the police arrived at my house, they didn't even look at the illegal gun that had been turned on me. The police left me in the care of the person who had turned the gun on me. (TMI? Where do we draw the lines of TMI when we're discussing protecting life?) In that classroom, I was forced to relive that and other moments of fear. I was supposed to be responsive and sharp, defending myself and my future students in that scenario. Instead, I sobbed until I found the strength to gather my things and leave. Why, I thought, would we ever put our students through such stresses? Higher ed has been my place of liberation -- the very thing that removed me from the most dangerous situation I have yet to survive. Why must we as students and faculty fear going to work or school where we are working to make ourselves better citizens? Two months ago, I left my partner behind as I pursue my education and career. Must I fear that last kiss in the airport was the last I will receive for one of us may be slaughtered by an active campus shooter? Should I fear that every morning hug goodbye to my daughter will be the last?

In class today, we discussed whether we would or should teach our students how to react in the event of an active shooter. I cannot in good conscience propagate fear that draws focus from classroom learning. I have intentionally avoided teaching responses to this scenario to my students. Instead, I have worked to make my classrooms a place where students want to be, a place where each of them matters, a place I want to return each session. Until I am forced to include this training in my curriculum (for one day I will be forced to include it), I focus my energy living my life rather than living in the pre-shadow of death. Perhaps in the discussion of mental illness, I am crazy to embrace every moment of this gift of life with the anticipation it will continue rather than the fear that the inevitability of death will catch me before I've taken time to live it to its fullest. The statistical probability of death is 100% (citation not needed). What is the statistical probability of living?