Virginia Tech

Well, I've been meaning to write this post for a week now but kept pushing it off to help me clarify my point. I guess my impression of teaching changed last week. Last Tuesday (I believe it was Tuesday), a student at Virginia Tech (a college) walked into a building and killed I believe 30 students, plus himself, and then 2 people earlier in the day (though my facts could be wrong). He chained the doors shut behind him to try to prevent people from escaping the building. Well, the next day I had to go teach my own class in Ballantine and was fearful of being in the building. Of course the fear has gone away by now, but what if something like that happened? I teach on the 2nd floor of Ballantine which would give me 3 stories to fall (because of the location of the room) if we had to go out the window. 30 stories would be over 30 feet which is when the chance of death drastically increases. I would not jump out that 30 foot window unless I knew I was going to die if I didn't. So, if somebody came into Ballantine shooting, what would I do? The window isn't really an option. I'd lock the door. Of course, lock the door. However, IU does not put locks on their doors. Locks can not be on the doors because students would lock themselves out of rooms and such, but couldn't IU provide the teachers with keys? I know in high schools there are practice lock-downs where teachers lock their doors using a key. Would it really cost that much to make some keys for the instructors? If they did, the problem would be solved. Alright though, no key and the window isn't an option. That leaves the option of trying to put things in front of the door. However, because IU is so large, everything is made to be moved easily. Even the heavy electronic cart can easily be rolled around. So, my idea would be to put a line of desks between the door and the wall opposite it. However, this probably wouldn't work, which would just leave the option of putting the large desk in front of the door and laying down against it like was done at Virginia Tech. My mom said that the class that was able to keep the gunman out was the math class. She was proud about that! :-) I guess the point of this post is that teaching at high schools started changing a few years ago when bomb threats and such became more frequent. It is unfortunate though that now college is changing too. I had 3 family members call me the day after the Virginia Tech shooting to see if I was alright. If I'm teaching a college class at a campus like Indiana University, my family should not have to worry about my safety.

Another part about this that upset me was me being the person in a position of power. Last semester I had a student pass out in the middle of my class and collapse into my desk while trying to leave the room. That moment in time showed me just how unprepared I am, just how weak I am, how unknowledgable I am. I didn't know what to do in the emergency but I was the person who was suppose to be acting. Fortunately I had someone who had worked as a doctors assistant who helped me recover the student from the floor, and I knew enough to keep the students back and open the windows (there was no air conditioning in the building) and get the student water and such, but I was shaken up for days after that. If someone was shooting a gun down the hall from where I was teaching, it would be me who was in charge of keeping 40 people safe. If my students did have to go out the window, I would be the last to go. If my students had to run down the hallway to escape, I'd be the person in the back making sure everyone was ahead of me and safe. That would be my job. I don't know how I'd react. I'm not sure if I'd pull myself together in a situation like that and do what I needed to do.

I guess this is all pretty silly to think about but it is also a good thing to know what my options are if something does happen. IU's president e-mailed everyone about the event and sent out a link to the IU Emergency Preparedness website. It was pathetic. It only included 4 things - Influenza, Email safey, Road Construction, and one other equally useless topic. Well, the e-mail safety site actually contained information but the influenza website was just a page of links to things like the IU Health center and the CDC website. My goodness, if IU expects those links to do any good if an influenza (such as the bird flu) hits IU then they are mistaken. Perhaps they have a plan if the distaster hits, but they apparently have no intentions of letting us know. What a shame.