Another Reason I'm Glad the Academic Year is Over

Campus shootings (and shooting sprees generally) have become so commonplace that I don’t usually bother to comment on them.

But yesterday’s incident at UCLA, in which a former graduate student killed an engineering professor and one other person before killing himself, caught my attention.  You see, one of the shooter’s reasons for killing the prof was over a grade he had received from the victim.

According to news reports, the professor was well respected and actually popular with students and staff alike.

There but before the grace of God go I…

Trauma

I’m a fan of the journalism aggregator website, Longform.  This morning I read this piece linked to the site from the Washington Post about the recovery of a wounded survivor of October’s mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon.

Before I go on, I should tell you a couple of things about myself.  The first, which you might know already if you’ve read anything else on this site, is that I’m a community college instructor.  For this reason I closely follow news of campus shootings silently praying that neither my students nor I ever fall victim to one.

The second thing, which I have only alluded to in passing in earlier posts, is that I am a trauma survivor.  I was impaled through the chest in a peacetime training accident while serving overseas with the military.  The injury left me permanently disabled.  I was hospitalized for two months, most of the first spent in the ICU.  It took me more than three years to fully adjust and find my “new normal” before I could begin to rebuild my life.

I don’t discuss this much.  While I suspect that the people who know me casually are aware I’m different I’m able to conceal much of the extent of my disability.  I wear long sleeved shirts year round to cover my withered right arm and few people, even family members, have seen the numerous wound and surgical scars that cover my body from my neck to my knees.  When I meet people for the first time they’re mildly surprised when I offer my left hand to shake but they don’t seem to notice much else.  I must say I’m pleased with my ability to pass as a normal, whole person most of the time.  I live alone without help, I’ve travelled the world by myself despite my disability, and I work at a job from which I derive great satisfaction.  Things could be much worse.

Which brings me to the 16 year old girl profiled in the Washington Post.  Eight weeks are a very short time to recover from the severe injuries she experienced and it is not reasonable to expect her to be her best self.  Nevertheless, the article paints a portrait of a very unappealing individual.  She is verbally abusive to everyone around her including her chronically ill mother.  She is demanding yet ungrateful.  Aside from a brief remark that she did nothing to help during the attack she seems devoid of sympathy for or even awareness of the other victims.  Her family members must explain every routine movement about the house lest they startle her unnecessarily.  It’s all about her.

I suspect she was a godawful brat well before the shooting, self-centered, narcissistic, and rude.  I strongly suspect her family insisted on treating her as exceptional throughout her young life.  To a degree it’s a characteristic of her generation.  It’s also true that illness makes most of us short tempered. 

But there are limits.  This girl has a lot going for her if she would just stop a moment and realize it.  She has the full support of her mom and brothers and the concern of her community.  I wish I had had a fraction of the support she enjoys.  My marriage collapsed during my own recovery while my mother and sisters used a power of attorney granted to manage my affairs to help themselves to my assets.  

Once home I was left unattended for long periods of time, during which I had to shift for myself.  I spent the many hours alone reliving the accident in my mind, memories which continue to surface years later.  Naturally I had my irritable moments, but for the most part I was my normal, polite self, with “please” this and “thank you” that in the face of the indifference of those entrusted with my care.  Most importantly I resolved to carry on even though it meant starting over with nothing.

My takeaway from the article was the lack of resiliency in our current crop of youth.  Over the past year or so articles in academic journals and “trade” periodicals such as The Chronicle of Higher Education have commented on counselors and administrators who warn faculty not to discuss things which might “trigger” bad memories or negative emotions in students.  I’ve received similar warnings from the institutions where I teach, as if I’m supposed to know the full personal history of each individual in my classes.  The subject I teach requires discussing controversial topics from time to time, so it’s not a matter of if but when a student will bring a complaint regardless of how carefully or circumspectly I present the material.  I am not sure which is worse, the potentially violent student or the prospect of having students like Umpqua Girl in my classroom.

The girl’s physical injuries will heal.  She can learn to cope with the emotional pain, which will dull though not disappear with the passage of time.  She has every opportunity to lead a normal life.  But from what I read, I think she will wring the shooting for all it’s worth for as long as she can.   She will mope, she will malinger, she will gradually leach the very life from those around her.  Rather than fulfill her responsibility to the dead to live a productive life to the best of her ability, the young woman profiled in the Post article shows every sign of spending her many remaining days draining the energy of those around her while producing nothing of value in return.

I am truly sorry for all those harmed in the Umpqua Community College shooting.  No one deserves such suffering.  But survivors have a choice.  They can move forward, pain be damned, or they can mire themselves along with their family and friends in the misery of a moment irrevocably past. 

It’s too bad that this young person has chosen the latter.

© 2015 The Unassuming Scholar

Problem Child

Checking my voicemail, I found a message from my department chair.

Of course, I knew what it was about.  After the better part of a decade teaching, I’d had my first real classroom confrontation with a student.  Naturally, she decided I was in the wrong and lodged a complaint.  My heart sank.  Up until this point, I’d had the first truly good year of my college teaching career.  Now, on the very last day of classes, this student had taken a raw, foul dump on what had been up until then a pleasantly memorable experience.

Her name was Jayrene.  (Well, not really, but let’s just say it was one of those names you never encounter outside a trailer park or The Jerry Springer Show.)  Jayrene was slightly older than the traditional college student, and her backstory would make the most jaded country music fan weep.  Her teenage mother had stuck Jayrene in foster care shortly after she was born and Jayrene spent her childhood bouncing among various homes.  Shortly after her own teenage pregnancy, Jayrene aged out of the foster system.  She remained mum about what she had done in the intervening eight or ten years before enrolling in college, though it didn’t take a leap of imagination to fill in the blanks.

Jayrene, despite her early hardships, was full of high ambitions.  She aspired to be a social worker, tending to kids like one she had once been.  I could get behind that; my own short stint working for the local social services department had left me with considerable sympathy for foster kids and social workers alike.   

Unfortunately, while Jayrene was bright enough and applied herself to her studies, she was also hard to get along with.  She wasn’t difficult in the way most of my students, praised from birth and brought up in an atmosphere of affluent entitlement, are difficult.  Rather, she was hostile in a white trash, “shut-the-fuck-up-or-I’ll-bust-you-over-the-head-with-a-Jim-Beam-bottle” sort of way. She had an enormous chip on her shoulder and was consistently moody and ill-mannered to the point where no one was ever sure exactly what to say to her. (Think Aileen Wuornos minus the trail of corpses behind her.)

I suspected Jayrene had deep-seated emotional problems, but I was being paid to teach her and not minister to her psychic booboos.  Taking a deep breath, I phoned Daniel, my department chair.  Daniel is a decent sort of guy and I’ve always gotten on well with him, so I knew there would be few, if any, recriminations.  Still, I wasn’t relishing the prospect of the ensuing discussion.

“Hey, Unassuming, thanks for returning my call.  Say, I wanted to talk to you about a student in your Thursday 7:00 section.  Name’s Jayrene something-or-other.”

“Yeah, I know her.”  Unfortunately.

“Well, she came to see me about a problem with you.”

“Yes, I know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, good.  Anyway, could you tell me about her?  And what happened last night?  She says you were rude to her in class and docked her the three participation points she was supposed to have gotten for coming to class.”

“Not much to tell, I’m afraid.  Jayrene’s bright enough, but she doesn’t play well with others.”

“Hmmm.  Yeah, I kind of got that idea from talking with her.”

“Anyway, I was giving my usual just-before-the-final spiel about when I’d have grades posted.  Usually, it’s perfunctory and there aren’t any questions.  But, then, Jayrene asked whether I gave + / - grades.”

“Hmmm, okay…”

“I said, yes, it’s in the syllabus.  So, she asked why.  I said it was because it enabled me to grade students more accurately based on their relative performance since I curve the final grade.  At this point, Jayrene turned red in the face, her voice took on a decidedly hostile tone, and said that wasn’t fair, because an A-minus would pull down her average.”

“Okay.  So far, so good…Strange she would get mad over that.”

“That’s what I thought.  So, when she continued to argue with me I said that in college, as in life, not everyone is first across the finish line.  That’s when she snapped, ‘Keep digging.’”

“Oh, she never mentioned that.” 

“Well, she wouldn’t, would she?  I just can’t let this slide, Daniel.  I can’t imagine having acted that way toward a professor when I was a student.”

“No, I can’t, either.”  Daniel stammered a moment, searching for words.  “Um, well, it sounds kind of like a he said/she said sort of thing…”

“Yes, except I have less of an incentive to lie.” 

Daniel seemed uncomfortable at the implication that any of our students would ever be less than forthright.  “Sure, yeah.  But you know, Unassuming, I’d feel better about this whole thing if you gave her the participation points.”

“Even after mouthing off to me in front of the class?”

“Well, I can’t tell you to give her the points, but…”

“Losing those points shouldn’t affect her final grade.  Taking them away was a symbolic gesture.”

“Wellll…I’m not so sure I’m comfortable with the symbolism here…”

“The idea was to discourage bad behavior.”

“I’m just asking you to reconsider, that’s all.”

“I’ll think it over.”

“Great.  I know you’ll do the right thing.”  As if there was any doubt as to what the “right thing” was.

And, so, once again, we’ve empowered the problem children.  A sad start to a much anticipated summer break…

© 2013 The Unassuming Scholar

Andrew Kehoe: An Overlooked Conservative Martyr?

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shootings here is an ode to an unsung hero, an overlooked martyr of American conservatism named Andrew Kehoe.  Mr. Kehoe, like so many Americans today, was a man who had had enough and was prepared to tell the world, in the most dramatic fashion, that he wasn’t going to take it anymore.

Andrew Kehoe lived on a farm outside the small town of Bath, Michigan in the late 1920s.  A civically minded sort, Kehoe served as a member of the Bath school board and had been the town clerk for a spell.  While in office, Kehoe pursued a single-issue agenda.  Specifically, he believed he was paying too much in school taxes.  Why, he didn’t even have kids!  Accordingly, Kehoe defined himself as a public servant by insisting on strict fiscal discipline. 

Kehoe’s desire not to waste the people’s taxes on such frivolities as books, facility maintenance, and teachers’ salaries brought him into bitter conflict with the profligate district superintendent, one Mr. Huyck.  Contributing to Kehoe’s ire was the fact that the prohibitive school taxes he was paying were breaking his finances.  He was so financially pressed he stopped paying the note on his farm and let his homeowner’s insurance lapse.  The bank soon informed Kehoe that it planned to foreclose, threatening his rightful stake in the “ownership society.”        

Driven to despair by the great liberal conspiracy to destroy the productive classes, Andrew Kehoe decided to push back against high taxes and oppressive government.  In the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson, “The tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” and Kehoe was just the sort of patriot to act upon that little nugget of wisdom handed down by one of the founders of our great republic.

A skilled electrician, Kehoe supplemented his slender income by doing maintenance work in the Bath schoolhouse.  (No contradiction here—getting a government paycheck is okay when you do it.  It’s only wrong when someone else does it.)   While puttering in the basement, Kehoe assembled a cache of dynamite and surplus military explosives.  Wired to an alarm clock, it made a pretty good time bomb. 

Andrew Kehoe knew he had to spare Bath’s schoolchildren from a bleak future living under the heel of a tyrannical government.  Worse, they might grow up to live unproductive lives earning so little as to not shoulder their fair share of the tax burden.  Kehoe also knew his wife couldn’t bear to face life without him, so he compassionately bludgeoned her to death and set fire to their house before heading into town to go out in a blaze of glory. 

Kehoe arrived in Bath just in time to see his plan come to fruition.  The bomb detonated with a ferocious blast.  In the confusion, Kehoe called Superintendent Huyck over to his truck.  As Huyck approached, Kehoe lifted up the .30 caliber rifle he purchased exercising his Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.  He fired a shot into the cab’s interior, having had the foresight to rig a bomb in the truck for just such an opportunity.  The rifle shot set off the truck bomb, killing both Kehoe and the oppressor bureaucrat Huyck.  The bomb also sent flying the scrap metal with which Kehoe had so thoughtfully loaded the truck, relieving a few more people of their lives in the process. 

The toll of Andrew Kehoe’s handiwork came to 45 deaths, most of them children between the ages of 7 and 12.  But when you think about it, wasn’t that a small price to pay when you’re striking a blow to preserve liberty in this great country of ours? 

Lord knows we need someone like Andrew Kehoe today.  You see, the problem with people like Adam Lanza is that they don’t act on principle.  Because the one thing that distinguishes a patriot from a lone nut is principle.  Because someone has to defend America from that Kenyan Muslim usurper in the White House, big government tax-and-spend politicians, limousine liberals, welfare queens, abortionists, Hollywood activists, the ACLU, atheists, feminists, queers, illegals, terrorists, tree huggers, peaceniks, labor unions, community organizers, and those Occupy freaks…oh, wait.  Never mind…

© 2013 The Unassuming Scholar

Lost Minds

They’ve lost their minds.  Conservatives, I mean.

There can’t be any other explanation.  Reading the headlines over the last few days it’s difficult to think otherwise: The National Rifle Association has called for armed guards in public schools following the Newtown massacre, there’s been still another mass shooting, this time in Pennsylvania, a middle aged truck driver has pled guilty to setting fire to an Ohio mosque claiming he was goaded by Fox News’ relentless vilification of Muslims, and the ragged remnants of the congressional Tea Party caucus are stubbornly blocking a compromise solution to the fiscal cliff crisis.

I’m not sure why this series of events is any more comment worthy than others of late.  The myriad permutations of madness that express themeslves so frequently in this society are like background noise by now.  It won’t be long—a few weeks at most—before the Newtown murders fade from popular memory.  More unsettlingly, it will probably be recalled only when the perpetrator of a fresh new atrocity exceeds Adam Lanza’s body count.  Because, you see, in our fascination with superlatives we are pleased even when the unthinkable occurs to set a new record.  Not overtly pleased, but the enthusiasm (if that’s the right word) is clear as the talking heads linger over the latest numbers as if recounting the score in a particularly exciting football game. 

We’ve become inured.  It’s our way.  Twenty-eight dead, and our biggest concern is that Congress is going to raise taxes and take away our guns.  A couple of days ago, I heard a story on NPR about the recent spike in nationwide gun sales and proposals to renew the federal assault weapons ban.   The memorable soundbite was from a man buying a semiautomatic rifle and several high-capacity magazines (and I wish I was making this up): “Ah was savin’ up to buy a new truck, but I figgered Ah’d better buy a new rifle ‘fore the law changes.”   (I don’t remember if this interview took place in the South.  It probably doesn’t matter.  In the same fashion that the inflectionless California dialect has become the norm among denizens of Blue State America, the manner of speech I like to call “Redneck Creole” has become the patois of Red State America.  This poor ass could have lived anywhere, really.)

Now for the obligatory disclaimer: This is not to imply all, or even most conservatives are on the loony Right.  But when one surveys the political landscape at the close of 2012 it is not difficult to infer that the quotidian conservative is at least partially influenced by the propaganda echo chamber created by Fox News and AM talk radio.  Subjected to a worldview which offers pat, self-contained answers in lieu of critical thinking, public acquiescence to the right-wing agenda can be little wonder to the minimally astute observer. 

Of course this raises the question of why so many people so willingly accept such tripe.  In a more charitable frame of mind I would chalk this up to conservatives' penchant for conflating opinion with fact (a flaw shared by more than a few on the Left), their unwillingness to consider points of view which conflict with or refute their own, and a narrow shortsightedness that leads them to support unstintingly policies that are beggaring our country.  When I’m feeling irritable (my default setting these days), I attribute our problems to the millions of brainwashed imbeciles that the U.S. produces so prodigally.

The balkanization of public opinion is, I’m told, an unfortunate byproduct of the information age.  We cherry-pick information to suit our politics.  So it matters little, in the end, what recommendations come of the Vice President’s search for solutions to the gun violence problem.  They will come to naught as Republican lawmakers and their Blue Dog Democrat colleagues alike depend upon favorable NRA endorsements at election time.  Even if Congress does succeed in enacting more restrictive gun laws those laws will inevitably be challenged in the courts, and the federal judiciary has traditionally taken a cautious approach to interpreting the Second Amendment. 

In short, expect little substantive change and more grieving communities until sanity and reason return to our political discourse.       

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar