Content warning: this article contains discussion of gun violence and death that some readers may find distressing.
In an email sent to the Smith community on Wednesday, April 12 with the subject line: “Emergency Preparedness Resources for Active Shooter Situation,” President Kathleen McCartney wrote:
“We live at a time when communities need to be prepared for an active shooting event, even though the probability of such an event is low. Going forward, we plan to remind the community each semester about best practices for responding to such an event.”
I was profoundly shocked to open my email to this message after my 9:25 a.m. lecture. The subject line prompted me to think that there was an active shooting event occurring on the Smith campus. I could only imagine what the terror of opening this email must have been like for students who have had to face gun violence firsthand. The aftermath of McCartney’s email left me wondering: what precipitated this out-of-the-blue message? Why haven’t the Smith administration addressed this issue earlier? What is Smith doing to protect students who are especially vulnerable to gun violence? Does Smith have a plan in place to deal with such an event beyond the resources distributed in the email?
Moreover, the brusqueness with which the email was constructed reflects a larger, collective desensitization to the prevalence of gun violence in our country. Given that schools tend to be high-risk settings for shootings, it is imperative that we, as a community, are educated on and prepared for such an event. However, McCartney’s email, well-intentioned though it may be, does very little in service of this objective. There is a difference between being adequately prepared for an unlikely event and succumbing to a cultural narrative that has become overly accustomed to something that, despite its frequency, should not be the norm.
It is not difficult to find updated statistics on mass shootings in the United States. A Google query of “recent shootings 2023” reveals the Gun Violence Archive’s “Mass Shootings in 2023,” the New York Times’ “A Partial List of U.S. Mass Shootings in 2023” and a Wikipedia article with similar statistics, among nearly three billion hits.
Gun violence is terrifyingly ordinary in our country; firearm-related injury remains the leading cause of death among children and adolescents. I understand the severity of this situation well, and have for many years. I grew up five miles away from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. I vividly remember the events of December 12, 2012, and was extremely fortunate to be kept safe and on lockdown at my own school while the tragedy unfolded in Newtown. I remember the conversation my parents had with me that night. Reflecting on this over a decade later, I wonder: how do adults explain these atrocities to little kids? How do you tell your fourth grader that 26 people were shot at a school, including 20 children between the ages of six and seven? Now, as a college student, I get a casual email from my college president about the possibility of an active shooter event as if it were a routine fire drill.
From my personal recollection, this is the first time McCartney has specifically addressed the issue of gun violence during my two years at Smith. Although we are college students who are fully capable of understanding the gravity of the situation, more formal recognition of the issue is necessary if we are to commit to taking gun violence seriously on an institutional level. Throughout grade school, I went through numerous lockdown drills, which have given me a rudimentary understanding of what one should do if there were an active shooter on campus. However, I recognize that this is not a universal experience for everyone at Smith. Among the many mixed reactions I’ve encountered to McCartney’s email, it is unsurprising that many of them are grateful for the marginal information the email did provide. While the good the email does should not be overlooked, its execution leaves much room for criticism.
Aside from its relatively unforeseen conception, I am also deeply troubled by the content of the email, namely, the mention of the “Run, Hide, Fight protocol.” While this is a widely recognized active shooter protocol, we need more than a hyperlink in a brief email. The language of the protocol is susceptible to confusion, and more importantly, has the potential to be triggering for those who have trauma related to any form of violence. In short, it is apt to have the effect of scaring students. If we are to truly feel safe and equipped to deal with a violent incident on campus, I can all but guarantee it will take more than what the College is giving us, especially given the recent mass shootings on college campuses. We need trauma-informed emergency planning.
The relationship our generation has with gun violence is far from homogenous. According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, young Black Americans experience the highest rates of gun homicides across all demographics. As a predominantly white institution (PWI), the majority of the Smith student body does not have to consider the threat of gun violence to the extent that many of our BIPOC classmates do. Discrepancies in privilege due to race and other factors must be taken into account when constructing an appropriate, long-term plan for contending with the threat of gun violence at Smith. The message the college is currently sending on this front, however, assumes a uniform experience.
This situation brings me back to the fall of 2021 when alt-right protesters planted themselves in front of Smith’s Elm Street houses in a reactionary haze to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s presence at the Presidential Colloquium. Adorned with Trump signs, confederate flags and myriad other alt-right paraphernalia, these protesters caused a frightening scene for students of color in particular, while Pelosi was protected by barricades, Campus Safety and Secret Service agents. This was a moment when the systems that should be protecting us failed to protect all of us equitably. How might this same system react to a far more serious incident such as an active shooter event? It is difficult to have faith in an institution that was unable to defend its most vulnerable students from a cluster of right-wing radicals carrying pitchforks and drums.
We cannot ignore the reality of gun violence in our country. But to accept this reality without criticizing it and actively fighting against it is to be complacent; this is the message McCartney is sending to the Smith community. For a college whose generally progressive politics are a significant aspect of its public face, Smith’s approach to the issue of gun violence falls outrageously short of this image, as well as of the sentiment of the student body. The Smith community deserves better than this; we deserve to rest assured knowing that we are safe from gun violence on our campus.
