Oct. 20, 2015

Once a year, I dream that a shooter enters the building where I teach. It’s all so irrational: what the shooter wants, and those weak assertions to “put down the gun” and “no one needs to get hurt.” In the first part of these dreams, I face the gun. In the worst of them, the gun turns on my students, and I wake up, because even my unconscious says, “don’t go there.”

Since the beginning of Oct., I’ve contemplated this scenario, not in my dreams, but in reality. It’s not just my story: it’s Betsy’s, Benjamin’s, Jordan’s, and Kaitlyn’s. So I asked my classes directly: if someone comes in here with a loaded gun, what are we going to do? Not theoretically, and no, I’m not asking how you feel about this, but concretely: what will we actually do?

As with many class discussions, first there’s silence, so I continue: there’s glass that the shooter can look through, so move toward this wall; the doors swing outward, so barricades are useless; we’re on the first floor, so we might get out the window, but we need something heavy to break the glass –can anyone spot anything heavy enough to break it? My students’ expressions change, because this isn’t theoretical. This is real and they know it.

Our university knows it too: on Oct. 15, Chancellor Beverly Kopper announced that there will be campus safety sessions on active shooter scenarios. I commend the Chancellor. When she writes, “the safety of students, faculty and staff members is my first priority,” I believe her. I’ll attend the sessions and I will ask: in every room in every building on campus, what can I concretely do to keep my students safe?

Last week, state Rep. Jesse Kremer (R-Kewaskum) and Sen. Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) introduced the “Campus Carry Act,” which will allow those with concealed carry permits to bring guns on campus, in our buildings and classrooms. They believe this will increase campus safety as well.

At the moment, I’m not interested in the politics of gun ownership, but I am posing the same questions: what will that actually look like? Will I be allowed to ask my students if one of them is carrying? Can I ask Chris, for example, “In the event of a shooter, will you defend us?” What if Chris agrees, but doesn’t show up that day? And suppose I do have a back-up plan: can I trust that this student knows how to load, aim and accurately fire a gun? I’m not worried about good intentions here: I’m worried about the ability to hit the right target.

And of course I need to worry about good intentions. On the day I ask, Tyler volunteers because Tyler wants to be a hero; on a different day, when I said the wrong thing, or another student was rude, Tyler might not feel heroic. Tyler could be angry enough to fire a gun at me, a student, or many students, and I won’t know until it happens.

So should I bring a gun to class? I had gun safety training because my father determined that, since he owned guns, his kids should know how to respect them and –concretely, not theoretically –to handle them: clean, load and unload, aim and fire them. I know how to do this, and I was a good shot.

Will this matter to my students? Should I bring out the gun and lay it on my desk, so they know? For it to do immediate good, it has to be loaded, and though the safety will be on, will that be safe enough? I’m one of those twitchy professors, always moving around the room. Suppose I bump that desk, and the gun slides off: will the safety keep that gun from firing once it hits the floor of Heide Hall? I try to imagine what it might be like to sit in a room with a professor who has a loaded gun.

I’m asking questions, because that’s what professors do, but I repeat: I’m not interested in thetheoretical right now, and judging from the sober, concerned expressions on my students’ faces, neither are they. On our campus –rural, mid-sized, home to traditional and non-traditional students, vets, athletes, nerds, future teachers, current entrepreneurs, students with sensory and mobile compromises, students who are already parents –we have acknowledged that this isn’t a bad dream, but a potential reality, and we have to ask: what will we actually do?

Deborah M. Fratz

Associate Professor, UW-W

Languages and Literatures