After reading the recent posts on lunatics in your classrooms, I feel like I really have to broach the topic head-on:
What's your plan if a crazy student busts into your classroom with a gun, god forbid?
I've had nutty students, I've been stalked on campus by a student and off-campus, years ago, by a psychotic female (she threatened to skin me alive and paint my apartment in my own blood, etc.).
I've had weirdo students who like to tail me and who want to be my buddy (because I actually listen to them, and they love it), and I have lots of daily contact with generally strange people, felons, druggies, etc.--all at school.
So yeah. My point is this: You gotta plan, or not? And if so, what is it?
My classrooms generally only have one door. Some have no windows. Sometimes, I feel pretty damn vulnerable in there, and I hate that, but it's not worth quitting.
Naturally, we aren't allowed to carry pepper spray. We aren't allowed to carry anything even resembling a gun. Our Public "Safety" guys consist of unfit specimens who couldn't restrain a baby and who are themselves unarmed.
Due to years and years of training, I could easily wrestle down an unarmed student of virtually any size and incapacitate him/her, but an armed one? Not without a serious risk of being shot.
I'm not trying to be dramatic here, but really, you've got to give this some thought. What's your plan? No plan? That's not a plan...
My basic strategy when faced with a shooter is this: try to get to the student without being shot, and beat their brains out with my stapler. Yeah, it's pathetic, but we're disarmed, and any alternative you come up with that involves praying, or cowering and waiting for death is 100% unacceptable to any rational person.
The world is rough. Bad things happen for real. You need a plan.
So what YOU got?
Prevention: If they think you love them, then they will not hate you or kill you. So lie to the students. Tell them you love them and care about them. Act like you love them. Make them feel like you are on their side. The added benefit and by-product of this strategy is that you might actually start to love the students. That would suck, but it would be better than being dead.
ReplyDeleteHow is anybody going to know if you're carrying pepper spray? It's only going to come out if you have to use it, and in those circumstances, I'm thinking nobody's going to be too mad at you.
ReplyDeleteThat said, my plan? I hope I'll never have to have one, which is unfortunately my real plan. But if I did, almost all the classrooms I teach in have two doors, so most of the students would be able to escape. I'd hope to be like Liviu Librescu, who sacrificed his life at Virginia Tech, holding the door shut while his students escaped through the windows, but was himself shot through the door. But now that you mention it, perhaps some pepper spray in my handbag wouldn't go amiss either.
I mean, I hope that if there were no other options, I would go out like Librescu. But what I really hope is that I won't have to.
ReplyDeleteMy plan is to summon my invisible sword and slay the mother-fucker so I can power-up to the next level of experience.
ReplyDeleteThat, or give birth right there in front of him (or her) just to show how hard it is to be an unwed mother.
Actually, I'd expect to die. Or faint. Or feign-faint. These occurrences, although scary, are still too rare to worry much about. I am much more likely to be punched than shot.
You seem to be upset that you can't carry a gun to class. And the fact that your first thought is "I should be carrying guns to school" is just pathetic.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot of media coverage that glorifies the little fucks who get all excited by being powerful by using a gun. In my world, I'd arrange for an industry promise that school shootings get no coverage, no glory (Paris has that policy in place for people who commit suicide on the tracks).
The fact is, chances are still super high that you will never have to deal with a shooter on your campus.
The best advice is to be close to your students. Know when they are upset with your grading, and don't be unnecessarily rude -- even when you think the fucks deserve a little rudeness.
And don't let the coverage of all things gun-related make you think that more guns and shooting students back is the best plan of action. Because you have almost no chance of actually facing that situation. EVER.
My highly trained ex-military father taught me when I was very little what to do:
ReplyDeleteIf you're a woman (especially a young one), use it to your advantage. Get all blubbery and small and frail so they get close. Then...well, then you go for the good shots and you disarm the motherfucker (turn the barrel AWAY from you, people...jeez). If you're pissed at that point (which I totally would be), you beat the shit out of him.
Mostly, though, do NOT get all heroic. Nobody's going to get saved or get out alive if you do stupid shit and, honestly, there are very few students who would take a bullet for me and, while I'll do some things to divert attention from them, there are some sacrifices I'm not willing to make.
If only the issue with Timothy was that I'm afraid he'll get violent. Hell, I'd relish that. Instead, it's more about mind games, anxiety, power struggles, and whether I'll lose my job because of the stupid fuck.
I have to disagree that thinking about having a gun is "pathetic." There's a saying about bringing a knife (or in our case, a stapler) to a gun fight...those aren't great odds. I agree that the chance of facing a shooter in the classroom are super slim for us. But on my campus, in one week, we had two incidences of robbery at gunpoint (one off, but VERY close, to campus and one SLAM in the middle of campus). I also teach an evening class and am walking around campus at nine or ten in the evening and I do not feel safe. My state is fairly gun friendly, and I have my concealed handgun permit. I carry everywhere I go (everywhere I can legally, anyway. My state leaves the decision about carrying on campus to the university, so while it's not illegal for me to carry on campus, it is against university policy and I could lose my job). I am trained in the safe use of guns, familiar with them, I have completed a military qualifications course for handguns and am comfortable handling and shooting them. I'm also a pretty good shot (my husband and I frequently go to the range for continued practice and instruction). I take gun safety very seriously. If I am skilled and capable of defending myself and my students, why shouldn't I be allowed to? And for those who would mention that it would scare students to know that they're professors might be carrying, that's why its called CONCEALED carry. They wouldn't even know I had it (there are several ways to carry concealed without anyone knowing). Beyond that, in my state anyway, there are A LOT of people with permits, so they are around people who are carrying concealed all the time and no one knows it. Rules against bringing guns on campus aren't going to stop the crazies from doing it, we should be able to defend ourselves.
ReplyDeleteI would come strapped for class with a 44 Magnum just so I can live this scene:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0lvp7a7pmk
Yes, I can wear a tweed blazer with patches with the best of them. The hand cannon would also come in handy during department meetings. Hell, I would even show up for Senate.
Barring a 44, I would go with a 12 gauge shotgun. I could load it while an exam was being returned, reminding students that my trigger finger gets awfully twitchy while students ask questions about the exams. Unlike the pistol, the shotgun does not require a very good aim.
BTW, Chole CommProf, can we get a picture? Nothing extravagant.
Given the lack of judgement No Cookies has shown in previous posts I'm rather glad he isn't legally allowed to carry on campus.
ReplyDeleteTexpat, you want a pic of me or my guns? :)
ReplyDeleteI think the odds of any of us facing a gun-entry is slim to none. It's moot to even dream up a survival strategy. More likely and more fatal is the banal, slow-term threat: stress. Many of us need a strategy to minimize the long-term effects of demoralizing adjunct gigs, which is not as sexily violent a preoccupation as some off-base gun fantasy, I I know. But no health insurance? That's dangerous.
ReplyDeleteI am on their side. I don't have to pretend that.
ReplyDeleteThe first rule of carrying a gun is don't do it unless you are fully capable of using it. The second rule is when you shoot, you shoot to kill. Not some candy-ass hit 'em in the knee bullshit, but through the head or through the heart. Kill them dead.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I have the nuts to do that. So I guess what I'd do is try to talk to the person, and if they weren't listening, I'd duck and jump for the window (every room I teach in has big windows).
I'd like to think I'd try to save my students at the cost of my own safety, but I probably wouldn't. I have a young daughter and I think I have some responsibility to try to stay alive for her. I mean, I wouldn't use a student as a human shield...I think...but I highly doubt I'd try to subdue the gunman so students could flee.
As for what I'd do if I felt a student was really a danger, I'd call some of my nice friends at the police force, and the D.A.'s office.
I thought about this a bit when our university initiated a text-message-based warning system after the VA Tech incident, and I had to decide whether I would check messages myself during class, or allow students to do so. I decided (and told my students) that the chances of an incident occurring both during and in the vicinity of our class were so vanishingly small that I felt no need to do so, but that if they (or their parents) felt it was necessary, I wouldn't stop them (but would expect them to take all possible measures to identify and check only those messages). The main effects of the system so far seem to be that I hear about tornado warnings on campus when I'm miles away, at home; learn just how often the 911 system goes down; and get timely notice of weather closings (the last item is handy).
ReplyDeleteI'm not an appropriate person to carry a gun, since I'm not generally good at making important, let alone life or death, decisions quickly (I think that's really the main factor that determines whether someone is an appropriate user of a gun, not his/her marksmanship). I'd prefer that neither my students nor my colleagues carry guns unless they've been trained not just in marksmanship and gun safety, but also in the psychological management of dangerous situations (which, as I understand it, tends to treat the use of guns as the last in a pretty long list of options). I'm pretty sure it's still against the rules to carry a gun on my campus, though my state is generally gun-friendly, and there have been some rumblings about allowing carrying on campus.
I don't feel unsafe enough to consider pepper spray, or even a whistle (in general, I'm pretty sure the most dangerous thing I do, by far, is get into a car on a regular basis). If I felt I had a real need for either, I'd probably carry them, regardless of laws/campus regulations (since my having them would only be revealed if I needed them, and the penalty for exercising a non-lethal option can only be so stringent).
I have thought about the layout of the classrooms in which I teach, and generally favor the bias of the current building codes, which privilege the ability to get out of a building quickly over the ability to barricade oneself in. In short, I fear fire and panicked crowds more than I do lone gunmen (or, rather, I think I'm more likely to face the former than the latter).
Should the extremely unlikely occur, I would do whatever I could to calm and protect my students, and gather information. I'd probably also consider locking doors (or piling furniture), turning off lights, trying to get everyone into the least vulnerable part of the room, and looking for escape methods. If (as is more than occasionally the case) I had a police officer or member of the military in the class, I would gladly defer to his/her expertise. Like several others, I consider Librescu a role model, not because he got killed, but because he put his students' safety first. Basically, I think a classroom is like a ship: the teacher is the last one off/out (or, if the danger is at the door, the one in front).
And, finally, I agree with Gladys: while I do have health insurance, I'm pretty sure the stress of my position (heavy load, relatively low pay, relatively little job security) is a far more real threat to my well-being than a student shooter.
@ Chloe: Um... Will you marry me?
ReplyDeleteWe can ignore the fact that I am already married, right?
;)
As for my plan: Once in my life I have put myself between a crazy person and some family members and friends. I like to think I would do it again, if I needed to. They say that I am a hero for my actions but I say that I only did what any caring person would have done in the same situation.
Mathsquatch out.
I feel like Gladys' point needs to be emphasized, highlighted, and outlined.
ReplyDeleteSince the chances of any of us ever being apart of such a shoot-out are slim to none, the real issue here is dealing with long-term stress, power struggles (as Midwest May said), and potentially losing your job to some shitfuck out to wreak a terrible vengeance because there was than D on the final grade. We need to cope and preserve ourselves, our jobs, our classrooms.
And for dealing with the stress?
COLLEGE MISERY
I'm not sure exactly how I would react, but any plan I concocted would almost certainly immediately fly out the window in favor of one the following:
ReplyDelete1) I curl up in a ball and weep uncontrollably.
2) I try to place my students between me and the shooter. In a situation like this, student = human shield.
3) Curl up in an oval and weep uncontrollably.
4) Sacrifice myself to save the students. Just kidding! Knock them down as I flee the room.
5) Beg and/or grovel as I weep uncontrollably.
Back to the High Noon scenario: If both the instructor and the nut are armed what I would be afraid of as a student in that room would be the crossfire and the inevitable panic as people try to flee. And that assumes that both the teacher and the gunman are armed with non-automatic weapons; if Rambo has a machine pistol and John Frink a revolver, Frink is a deadman. Also, many older classrooms are not designed to provide any cover....open the door and the instructor is right there. The truth is most school shootings happen in high schools, and the shooters are gunning for students, not instructors. However, there have been incidents in colleges where the reverse applied: a nut gunning for a professor. A good example would be the 1996 San Diego State shooting, where an engineering grad student killed three professors at a thesis defense. I would say that the odds of being shot by a college student are pretty low and that the stress of being a VAP or and adjunct is the real occupational hazard.
ReplyDeleteAs a Canadian, carrying a gun is not an option, although this country does have the unfortunate history of those two major postsecondary shootings (Ecole Polytechnique and Concordia) within recent memory, to keep us aware of the possibility of such an event happening (again) here.
ReplyDeleteAt my university, I believe it's mandated in the collective agreements of both course instructors and tutorial leaders that every classroom contain a phone (with emergency access), though I've never noticed whether my rooms all actually do or not. I guess that a phone wouldn't be of much use in a shooting situation, though, at least not immediately.
To be honest, being in Canada, I never think about the possibility that anyone other than a police officer might be carrying a gun around (it being illegal and all). I'm also big and strong enough that I think I could fight off virtually any unarmed assailant, though that seems like an unlikely event compared to the odds of having my intellect attacked in class, so I've never really prepped for the former. (I'm terrified of the latter however, though, thankfully, it too has yet to happen.)
Carry permits aren't allowed where I am, unless you can demonstrate you have to carry around large sums of money or valuables as part of your job. Even then, getting a carry permit is a long, expensive process and no guarantee you'll be awarded one even after spending thousands on lawyer's fees. Mace is also illegal, and if you want to purchase pepper spray, you must register with the government. However knives with blades 4" or less are legal to carry. A man who was brutally attacked by a gang of teens managed to save his life by getting his pocketknife out of his backpack, so if you really are in dangerous environments on a regular basis, it's not a bad idea to carry one.
ReplyDeleteThe best tactic is to GTFOOT, but of course, that may not be possible. Disarming a gun or a knife may seem like madness because you may be shot or stabbed - actually, any struggle for a knife or gun will nearly always result in shots fired/blood drawn - but if you are in a situation where getting shot or stabbed is already imminent, you have nothing to lose by fighting for your life.
Like No Cookies, I have years and years of self-defense training but I have also trained in weapons disarms. So if you decide to take a self-defense class, make sure it is one that includes knife and gun disarms as well as the proper use of knives and guns (that is, dull practice knives and rubber guns at first, working up to practice with live blades and Airsoft or real firearms). Any good self-defense curriculum should also include defense against multiple attackers, in confined spaces, and the use of improvised weapons.
I would hope that most college campuses aren't quite so dangerous, but it's never a bad idea to acquire some self-defense skills. If nothing else, it will improve your confidence and make you less likely to be selected as a target, since violent criminals choose victims who appear weak or fearful.
We are defenseless against most of the evil in the world; why would it be different in a classroom?
ReplyDeleteI thought about this issue when I first started teaching, and I do think on it again whenever a workplace shooting occurs.
Is this another reason to take up those hybrid classes my boss keeps offering me?
Kimmy--
ReplyDeleteMy least happy student from my summer online class just showed up in my office hours (well, actually, 10 minutes after the end of my office hours, and 5 minutes before I needed to be in class) today. In this case, the worst possible outcome is a formal grade complaint (which won't fly). But as long as we have publicly-available in-person office hours, I don't think online or hybrid classes will be any protection. And I do think that most proffies will experience at least one instance of non-physically-threatening but nevertheless annoying, distracting, and even a bit unnerving stalking/harassing/serial complaining to everyone in sight by an unhappy student in their careers.
For Kimmy and Cassandra:
ReplyDeleteI once had a student track me down in another classroom 6 weeks after the end of the term he failed. He was unwilling to accept that I didn't have time to talk to him and that his failure (and plagiarism on top of the F he had earned from low grades) was out of my hands.
One year, I had a student and her mom call me every day the week of Christmas because she failed a class I was only TAing. They tracked down my home phone and left multiple messages until they figured I wasn't the one they should call. So, they then looked up the prof and started repeatedly calling her at home.
Point of stories: A disgruntled student bent on finding you WILL find you. Heck, I've even had students shout obscenities at me as I walked down the street, so unless you live far away from work, they can find us.
I teach college classes on a military base in the Middle East.
ReplyDeleteALL of my students are armed ALL of the time. Most have a side arm, some have semi-automatic rifles. They have also usually been trained in unarmed combat.
We also get mortar shells flying onto the base about once or week or more.
And sometimes I am told not to go anywhere without an escort because I might get kidnapped and tortured and eventually killed.
I keep my armor and helmet nearby and know where the bunkers are for the mortar.
For a student situation, my plan is to point out that if I'm killed or injured, nobody will get a grade.
I get armed escorts for the kidnapping situation.
Somehow a disgruntled student swearing at me doesn't really seem like much of an issue.
I teach in Virginia, and we have "hostile intruder" drills. The most frightening student event I have encountered is as follows: Student informs me that he can "read my mind." Student is physically larger than me (and I am not small) and habitually stays after class to "chat" while slowly backing me up across the room into the corner. Student exhibits symptoms of psychosis, describing to me the voices he hears in his head and also the voices he hears in MY head.
ReplyDeleteInstructor (that's me) calls student psych services and says "Hi there, this is what is happening in my class, can you help me?"
I am told "Oh, yes, we know about him." I request help. "No, we can't actually do anything until he DOES something."
Greeaaaat.
I began bringing my dog to class. I have taught her to growl on command, and while anyone who knows anything about dogs knows that she's faking, this kid didn't and thought my dog might kill him.
Fortunately, I had already stopped having office hours in my office because of not one but TWO students who shut the door behind themselves and said "I really need an A in this class. What can I do to make that happen?" (I am a woman, both students were men.) The more enterprising actually untucked his shirt and began unbuttoning it.