In today’s Sunday Review, New York Times Op-Ed columnist Frank Bruni rails against Texas’ move to campus carry. “Take a moment with that phrase. Get beyond its amiable alliteration. It’s an endorsement of guns in a haven for scholarship and theater of ideas where there’s an especially powerful case against them.” By people who don’t have a clue. Like Frank, frankly. Bruni’s anti-ballistic beat-down is boilerplate bile – professors will be muzzled by the possibility of being muzzled, drunken students will go off-half-cocked, suicide will stain dorm room walls, that sort of thing. More interesting: the top comment on the website, penned by a self-professed “university faculty member” . . .
As a university faculty member for more than 40 years I have had occasion to deal with students provoked to fury by something said in class, students who come to class drunk or drugged, students arriving with stress or anger from something happening somewhere else and yes, on two or three occasions with students carrying firearms.
When that has happened it used to be a matter of excusing myself for a moment, calling security, and letting law enforcement address the situation. And while I have had students come to blows in class I have never worried about personal safety. A couple of times students have come to see me in the office angry about a grade but in the end everything worked out.
But I wonder whether we have reached a tipping point where faculty will give everyone an A grade to avoid irritating students who think carrying guns is a necessary part of problem-solving and conflict management. It is hard not to chuckle at the irony of admonitions to hace trigger warning [sic] about a phrase or photo when there is someone in class mentally caressing the trigger of a Glock in a backpack.
And having taught for years in Texas I know students there are just as vulnerable to the pressures and anxieties triggering violence as students anywhere else. It is unfortunate we must live with a world of legislative Walter Mittys who make up for their self-loathing from kissing the feet of plutocrats that they subject us all to unnecessary danger from the weak-minded among us.
Judging from the commentator’s screen nic, it’s entirely possible his students were “provoked to fury.” (USA999. Gedddit? The U.S. is the Great Satan.) But I don’t believe for a second that “on two or three occasions” he dealt with “students carrying firearms.” First of all, two OR three? I can remember exactly how many times I’ve had a gun pointed at me, and I’m not an anti-pistol prof.
Second, unless he lived in a open carry campus carry state, how did he know “two or three” students were carrying firearms? More to the point, how did he survive? In fact, USA999 debunks the idea that students angry over grades will perforate their prof. And then he’s off on the usual ammosexual trigger-caressing ad hominem B.S. As for his last comment . . .
It’s a perfect embodiment of the educational establishment’s anti-gun animus. So much so I feel obliged to repeat it: “It is unfortunate we must live with a world of legislative Walter Mittys who make up for their self-loathing from kissing the feet of plutocrats that they subject us all to unnecessary danger from the weak-minded among us.” In other words, legislators are wanna be’s (dictators?) who hate themselves for kowtowing to capitalists. No-goodniks who dare to represent voters, who are a bunch of cretins.
It’s more proof – if proof be needed – that our education system is polluted by teachers who despise America. People who don’t have a clue about what makes our Constitutional Republic a safe haven for citizens who value life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We have every reason to despise these acrimonious academics. We should help them seek immediate, alternative employment. Call it off-campus carry. [h/t JP]