Tuesday, October 06, 2015

Damned Ad and Security Stuffs

I got emailed an ad for a webinar on campus safety from some campus safety company.

The ad cites as recent some incidents in 2013, and says something about it being lucky that no one was hurt in these incidents.

Words aren't adequate to express my disgust in oh so many ways.

***

Our campus did some security stuffs a while back.  I think administrators had some training, and they put little flip cards in the classrooms, so that we can refer to them during a disaster.

One of the buildings I regularly teach in was built in the 70s, and so was built for riot control.  I teach up a couple of floors, and the door has only a little window in it.  I can imagine we could, if we heard something scary, block off the door with a table and hide, though I don't think we can lock the doors.

The other building I teach regularly in is almost brand new; it's built for light, pleasant study areas, and flowing movement.  The classrooms tend to have nice big windows either to the outside or to the inside (the fishbowl thing seems sort of weird, but the room I teach in isn't too fishbowly).  We get nice light, and the people walking by don't seem to bother to look in, and the students don't seem to get too distracted, and I'm busy teaching.  But while the glass is "shatterproof," I doubt it's bullet proof.  Someone could drive by, lower their car window and shoot at people in a row of classes or standing at the bus stop, and then drive off.  It's discomfiting to say the least.

***

I don't know what to say about the shooting.  Have I gone numb?  Exhausted by the situations here?  Defeated?

I've lost any expectation that politicians will do anything meaningful about gun violence, school funding, or infrastructure.  And I have every expectation that they'll do more and more to regulate women's bodies, advance fundamentalist Christianity as the nearly state religion, and make war on people who I don't want to make war on.

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