In response to the shooting at Brown University.
You can find these signs all over campus that say “Run, Hide, Fight” (which is copyrighted or trademarked or something, which is another conversation we could have). I have had a bit for a while where I say that if NU is telling us to literally fight a person to not die while on campus, they should get us all krav maga classes. Or at least get them for instructors.
Here’s how I think I will die.
The scene: My office building is terrible. Frances Searle is basically a brutalist labyrinth without windows. I love it the way I love winters — Frances Searle is something we survive together. Being in Frances Searle makes us a stronger community. The classrooms I spend the most time in are non-euclidean concrete boxes filled with tight lines of tables, chairs that don’t move easily, a single door with a little window.
I’m in the front of the room — FSB 2-378 is usually where I imagine it — leading a class discussion. I’m asking my students a serious question using a nonsense example because that’s my vibe. I pause mid-sentence and wait for some construction noise to stop. Someone takes their phone out and looks at the screen.
“Are you hearing back about a job interview or is your sister in labor?” I ask them. I have a no screen policy in class, with exceptions for things like job interview updates and siblings in labor.
Then everyone’s phones buzz at once. It’s the NU alert system informing everyone attached to it that there are reports of an active shooter scenario in FSB. That’s what they call it, active shooter scenario.
And that’s when a room of twenty 18-22 year olds look at me to tell them what to do. Because I’m the adult in the room. I am responsible for them. Many of these legal adults, who spent their entire lives doing exactly what they’re told as precisely as possible in order to get into a school like Northwestern, remind me that they are, in fact, children.
I am the adult and I need to tell them what to do because I am in charge of the classroom. I am the authority figure and all I have had to prepare me for this moment is a fucking sign that says “Run, hide, fight (TM).”
Maybe we turn off the lights to the room and try to hide under the desks. Maybe I direct them to a back stairwell in the building to get outside. Is that safer? To go outside? But then we’d be in an open space like during the DC sniper attacks of 2002. Is it better to stay inside and block a door? I don’t know because no one ever told me. And it doesn’t really matter even if they had because I am not the kind of person who should be in charge of anyone’s safety against a person with a gun — I am in this position because I’m just this nerd who gets way too excited about how people work together to build neat things.
Teaching — being the authority in a room — is widely considered the worst part of being a graduate student. You are wildly underpaid (certain not paid enough to die for those kids) to spend many hours doing things that will in no way help you to graduate or to get a job after you graduate. But, the thing is, a lot of my friends, the good ones — they love teaching. I love teaching. I love watching my students learn, seeing them become themselves. I love how they change over even just the 10-week quarter. I love the little parts of themselves they give to each other and to me in class and in assignments. This student tells us about being bullied on social media by people twice their age. This one tells us about a family trip. This one asks for advice on handling a group-member-not-doing-work and we have a class discussion on collaboration and persuasion — you know, that thing I study. I even love the kid who causes me grief and frustrates me, and I hope they will have the support they need to grow out of this stage in their life.
And that’s how I will die. I die because I love these kids who I don’t really know, because I just so happen to be the authority in the room, I have absolutely no clue what to do. My institution has left me completely unprepared for this moment and the right people still don’t care enough about gun violence to have stopped this. I will die because, for some unknown reason, I have decided that when I have to do something really stupid to protect a 19 year old I will do that really stupid thing.
Similar to Northwestern’s Run, Hide, Fight signs, a group of U.S. lawmakers also decided to do something that in no way responds to the crisis at hand by releasing a statement saying they condemn antisemitism in response to the concurrent massacre of Jews in Sydney, Australia. Because such condemnations of antisemitism and similar condemnations for violence in schools have been thus far minimally effective, I strongly support stricter gun laws in the United States. As someone interested in evidence, I have been convinced by the ample evidence to support the claim that strict laws controlling access to firearms makes places safer. I also know that stricter gun laws — and condemnations of violence, calls against antisemitism, and thoughts and prayers — are not enough. Evidence also always shows that social interventions and social services are so important. People who actually know about these things agree that social interventions are a necessary part of preventing violence driven by extremist bigotry.
One of the things I tell my public speaking students and people I have mentored in general is that you should end a talk by giving your audience 1) the main point of your talk in a single sentence and 2) one or two action items. This way they can tell others what they learned and know what to do next.
The people who are responsible for your children’s safety have literally no clue what to do when someone comes to kill your child. You can make it significantly less likely someone will try to kill your child by creating and enforcing stricter gun laws, and by funding, supporting, and/or personally working on social initiatives that will break the pipelines that turn frustrated men into killers.
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