Schools will go to great lengths to avoid letting faculty and staff carry firearms to protect themselves and their students. First there was the Pennsylvania school district that’s equipping each classroom with a bucket of rocks to chuck at a potential shooter. Most will teach kids to toss books and chairs…anything that’s at hand in order to slow a shooter down.
The fact that more districts and law enforcement officials are coming around to the realization that arming teachers and staff is the most effective option to save lives doesn’t seem to have made much of an impression on the powers that be at Oakland University in Auburn Hills, Michigan.
OU is, of course, a designated gun-free zone. So, with any kind of ballistic response off the table, the school’s chosen weapon against armed attackers will be…hockey pucks.
“We believe that once faculty have been trained in what to do in an active shooter situation, they will be able to share that information with students to provide a more secure learning environment,”says (American Association of University Professors) President Tom Discenna.
In addition to training, the union has also distributed hockey pucks to its members and to students.
According to (OU Police Chief Mark) Gordon, to fight effectively, faculty and students need to be prepared to throw objects that are heavy and will cause a distraction.
Hockey pucks provide the ability to be carried in brief cases or backpacks, are not considered a weapon, and will meet the goal of distracting the shooter, according to Gordon.
Pure genius. Because the last thing you want when someone’s walking through campus shooting at people is anything that’s “considered a weapon.”
Currently, the (professors) union has distributed the pucks to its 800 members and is working with student groups to distribute an additional 1,700 pucks to students.
The hockey pucks are also being used as a fundraising device as the union seeks to raise the necessary money to equip all campus classroom doors with a lock that can be used without leaving the room in the event of an emergency.
Got that? The school’s door locks are currently outside the classrooms’ doors. So students can’t even lock the doors from the inside to slow down a potential shooter. Maybe they’ll draw lots to see who goes outside and locks the doors (thus locking themselves out of the classroom).
At least they’ll have those vulcanized rubber discs in their backpacks.