Teachers with and without guns

It is always noteworthy when an absurd idea strikes a cultural shiver in a national community. The proposition that teachers carry guns at school provides a powerful example of such a cultural _frisson_ . Why does the idea seem at once horrifying and attractive to both students and teachers alike? Why does the thought of toting an Uzi send a thrill through high-school students? A devout pacifist, I laughed when Stephen Colbert suggested that principals should be packing. But clearly, he is fascinated by the idea too.

How might such a rule play out at the university? One can conjure up countless gruesome and silly scenarios: Professors in campanile towers with long-range rifles, picking off the graduate students who've accused them of harassment, or whom they just plain old don't like. Student posses roaring through departmental offices, wasting the prof who flunked them or refused to write a recommendation. What about a campus civil war between the administrators and the faculty, with the students playing the role of contentious coalition of the willing? Different groups could be offered diplomas, fellowships, parking spaces, computer-time, for joining a particular side. Interdepartmental guerilla warfare? Raids on Sociology by French. History attacks Economics.

We can afford to laugh at the university about such things. We know, of course, that schools aren't "safe." But we like to think that we are quite secure at the university. Crime may be committed in the parking lots, in the dorms, in the deserted offices, and on the street near campus, but crime and violence AT the university? No.

There are reasons for this assumption. From its inception, the university has -- to some degree -- resembled the monastery in a removal from the sphere of worldly concerns and it has maintained itself, often successfully, as an intellectual refuge from that world and the violent struggles that shake nations and states. Accordingly, the University of North Carolina remained open during the entire Civil War, although there were virtually no students to attend, and more to the point, there was fighting occurring at its very doors. There are indeed ways in which the university has provided scholarly sanctuary. But to whom? Men. Christians (and in this country, predominantly Protestants). Whites. The privileged. As the university has become democratized, integrated, and diversified, it has struggled to maintain its character as monastic, pastoral site of learning.

Whether or not this position is worth maintaining is an open question that should be considered in and of itself. _Should_ the university be a refuge? Why? And if not, why not, and what SHOULD the university be? What spatial-political relations should/can exist between the university and/in late capitalism?

In the meantime, the question of "safety" haunts the university. But usually not directly. One receives police reports about crimes committed near campus. One is asked to take a computerized harassment course, so as to know what harassment is. Professors and students are enjoined to be "civil" when we all know that the most exciting debates between individuals are rarely unemotional and often border on the impolite. Radical right students complain -- with some justification, perhaps -- that free speech is somehow straight-jacketed in the classroom. Professors, for their part, hesitate to reveal their own ignorance, their own pain, and their own difficulty with a question -- be it in Mathematics or Studio Art. The appearance of expertise, the glamour of mastery must be maintained.

But, is it safe to express your ideas at the university? If it is, there will surely be debate and argument. If it isn't, then there will be paranoia, frustration, and most importantly, rage.

Might it be possible to bring back uncertainty, free questioning, and a controlled anger into the university? Might it be possible to talk about the role of such emotions -- anger, rage, frustration, and despair -- without setting off a Trenchcoat Mafia of students or faculty or upper level management? I suspect that this kind of initiative is precisely what needs to happen, but I also supect that it is not a "safe" choice.

Because there are indeed real dangers to fear. I think, more often than I'd like to, about the murder of two German professors who taught at Dartmouth, and who opened their door to two young men pretending to be Dartmouth students. The murder happened off campus, the killers were local kids, and so the event cannot be construed exactly as a "university crime." But the issue raises questions hiding under the obvious fears, the blatant worries. At time of writing, noone knows exactly why these professors were killed. Absurdly, and in action-movie fashion, one can wonder what would have happened if Half Zantop had answered his front door with a Smith and Wesson, and surmise how things might have played out if his wife had had a shotgun at the ready while she was making sandwiches in the kitchen. We return again to the fantasy of the teacher empowered by fire-power. But more pertinent questions (among others) might be these: Would the Zantops have been killed if they HADN'T been professors? What if they had been high-school or elementary school teachers instead? Did their status as academics somehow precipitate the killings? Finally, did the Zantops think that being professors would automatically protect them from the wrath of young people, and is this why they calmly let young strangers in the house? Perhaps. After all, Socrates was never attacked by the kids. It was the adults -- the government -- who did away with him.

The Zantop murders suggest that the university may not be alot more safe than the school, and the public visibility of academics, their claims to cultural capital, may make them vulnerable within their own communities.

But, if there is absolutely no refuge any longer in the school or in the university, if the Ivory Tower is either a fascistic bunker or a danger zone (or both simultaneously), then how do we safe-guard learning, while at the same time, giving free-play to ideas?

This seems to me to be an absolutely crucial and fundamental question.

Meanwhile our fantasies about guns at school run wild, and underneath them, some hidden provocation, some wish lurks and glimmers -- maddeningly, columbine-like -- eluding our consciousness.