Professor Gaga, as you may recall, is a real pedagogue, one who teaches at a university that, as yet, has not passed a “campus carry” bill legalizing guns on campus. Recently the University of Houston passed such legislation, and now the state of Georgia has followed suit. I lived in Atlanta for eleven years. I got my Ph.D. there. Had this law been in effect then, I would have skipped the doctorate and settled for my mere masters degree.
Over the past decade, I’ve heard suggestions that educators be armed in the classroom. That way, if there’s a shooter among students, the educator can step up and do the right thing by firing back, effectively taking out the shooter before the shooter can create victims. The increasing frequency of this proffered solution correlates directly with the increasing frequency of school shootings. I assure the ignorant among my readers that this is no solution.
Whenever this solution has been proposed, I think of myself armed in the classroom, a space I still consider sacred. First I think of just carrying a firearm and having no need to use it. As a young child, I fired numerous cap guns and, possibly, a B.B. gun or two belonging to the neighbor boys who lived near my grandparents, but I have never shot a handgun or rifle. What good would arming me do? Perhaps I would be required, as part of my annual teacher training, to go to a firing range and take aim at a paper person with a target on its chest. Who would pay for such training? How would it cut into my class preparation and grading time? And what if I failed? What if I couldn’t hit the paper person? Would I lose my job? Would my merit points be docked?
And does it matter at all that I do not want to own, much less carry, a gun? Do my reasons for that decision matter? My reasons, incidentally, in no way challenge the Second Amendment to the Constitution. While I would argue for stricter gun laws in the United States, I would not argue that gun ownership is wrong. That said, it is wrong for me. You’ll have to trust me on this point.
Another problem with the idea of arming educators is that not all of us are entirely stable either. It’s terrifically misguided to believe that only “disgruntled” or mentally imbalanced students would open fire in the classroom.
Assuming that I, as an already underpaid, overworked, and often stressed educator, was armed in the classroom and was faced with an active shooter, what then? Say I was too cowardly to draw my weapon. Say I took aim and fired and shot the shooter. Say I shot someone else quite by accident because really I never could hit the paper person with the target on its chest. Whatever you choose to imagine here, can you also imagine the psychological damage any and all of these scenarios would exact? I can. And who’s going to pay for that? Who’s going to pay for my therapy, and how much therapy would that person or persons believe I needed in order to move on with my life?
I have at times tried to think of a salary high enough to make me believe it was okay to arm myself as an educator. There is no such salary.
On occasion I have told my classes that in an emergency they cannot depend on me. I am not sure, I always say, how I’ll react. I have not been in an “active shooter” situation. I do not want to be. The longer I teach, the more likely it becomes that I may have to face such a scenario. Already, many colleagues believe it’s no longer a matter of if but rather of when. At any rate, the possibility of facing “active shooter” situations has entered our dialogue; it creeps into our meetings. And the encroachment has been real enough in other ways as well. I have now attended two or more meetings when armed security had to be present. I know of at least three teachers who were stalked on campus; two of them were eventually murdered in their home.
Implementing “campus carry” legislation is more than a mistake. The only way I can make light of it is to imagine what I might have to add to my syllabus. “Please put away your cell phones and guns before class begins. Points will be deducted from your final grade if you use them during class. Habitual texting or shooting during class is disrespectful to your classmates and me and may result in your being dropped from the course — if I survive.”
It’s not funny, not at all.
I don’t know what I’ll do if the state I live in or the university that employs me passes such a bill, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be teaching. And that’s a damned shame, because I’m a dedicated and effective educator, one who happens to love life.
PROFESSOR GAGA 