Shootings and Their Psychological Aftermath

Today, as I stood before my classes, I made the same announcement each time.
"Starting today, the door will be locked when class begins, so please don't be late."
It's not part of my crackdown on tardiness, which I've always discouraged.
The truth is that the latest school shooting has me a little antsy.
A community college, like the one where I teach. Nine people, plus the shooter dead. Many more wounded, bleeding on the hard tile floors while their friends cowered and prayed for help.

Photo from the New York Times. Click it to go to the story. 

I look at the picture of the students walking out of the classroom with their  hands up, and I recognize them. Not the actual people, but the kinds of students who I teach. Some of them are young, right out of high school. Others are older and chose to return to college. It's still early enough in the semester that some of them carefully pick out their clothes and style their hair, but others, those raising kids and working full-time jobs, feel lucky to get out of the house without jam on their shirts or sleep in their eyes. 

That's why today I announced that we'd be locking the door.

"Is that glass bulletproof?" One student asked as he waved toward the glass in the door.

"No, but it's one more deterrent, one more thing to slow someone down," I said. "If someone knocks, I'll go to the door to let them in. I'm old. I've lived my life."

"Oh, man, that's my dream to take out a shooter," said Joseph, 25, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

In Oregon, a Veteran charged the shooter. 30-year-old Chris Mintz was shot six times according to The Daily Beast. 

"That guy was in my unit," Joseph said. 

"Really?" 

Each of my classes has at least one veteran, and they all give me that sense that they would rush a door if a shooter appeared. But I don't want them to have to. They are all young and they survived horrible wars. They should find peace in their school, in their country. 

One of my classrooms doesn't lock with the swipe of my key card, and I don't have a key. I emailed the woman in charge of scheduling and asked my classes to be changed. Within an hour, she had organized it so all of my classes will meet in the same room from now on.  

A room that will be locked because the United States has become a dangerous place, where many people are killed in random gun violence.

To Friend or To Block

Dear Relatives and Faraway Friends,
I'm so happy to be your friend on Facebook. Now, even though we live apart from each other, I can keep up with your activities, see your fun pics, watch your baby grow, laugh at your puppy pictures. Facebook gives us a chance to be closer.
 I can see the nursery you've prepared for the baby or like your child's senior picture. I can cheer for you on a run or a bike ride. It makes me feel less lonely for all my relatives while I'm here in Central Ohio and you are spread from other areas in Ohio to Florida to Virginia to Texas and California.
But, even though it's not an election, you've started to "like" things that drive me crazy. Political things. Things like bombs and guns and self-centered politicians who don't really care about making our country better. And then, I have to block you.
 Because it drives me crazy.
 I bite my tongue and sit on my hands so I don't respond.

 I want to ply people with knowledge, but a recent survey shows that, whether liberal or conservative, people are not influenced by logic when it comes to politics. That means that liberals are convinced that President George Bush banned all stem cell research, even though he allowed research to continue with already identified stem cell lines, and conservatives when shone a graph that had a line going up with the number of jobs under President Obama refused to see it as an increase in jobs. That same graph when showing shoe sales, they could read as an increase in shoe sales.
Okay, I'm not going to convince you and you're not going to convince me.
I admit to being guilty of liking one thing political on Facebook. It was a law that passed and an old high school friend who I hadn't talked to in years brought it up the minute we exchanged messages. And we didn't friend each other.
Since then, I have avoided liking anything political. So how bout we avoid politics on Facebook?
That way we can still be friends, and I won't have to block you. So you don't drive me crazy.