Several nights ago I was attending a lecture, reading Lyman's Vertebrate Taphonomy, when I noticed someone standing beside me. A thin male student in a long grey coat walked into the room halfway through the lecture, peering around the classroom for someone or something. On a normal day I wouldn't have thought twice about it, but this transpired the day after the Northern Illinois University tragedy. My heartbeat quickened, I started to worry about what to do if this was an insane student, and I was somewhat relieved when he found a seat and took out a notebook.
Perhaps my anxiety in that specific case was unfounded, but with a New Jersey college closing down today due to bomb threats, I have to admit that I don't feel especially safe on campus. I don't mean this to say that I think I'm in immediate, obvious danger, but rather that should some disturbed person decide to go on a rampage or plant a bomb there is nothing I can do about it. There are police patrols and procedures to lock down the campus, I'm sure, but such reactionary measures do not provide me much comfort.
Living in a city, I thought I would be most worried about my car being stolen, getting mugged, or my apartment being robbed; never did I think that I would have to worry about senseless murder that has become all-too-common in recent years.
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Vertebrate Taphonomy! I have that book! And I remember fondly the class (zooarchaeology) for which I bought it.
Thanks for this post. I've been meaning to do one on school shootings for a while... this may be the kickstart I needed to actually buckle down and write it.
Social-cognitive psychologists would likely call this a case of the Availability Heuristic (or perhaps the Vividness Heuristic) at work; the base rate of shootings at colleges and universities is, of course, extremely low. Driving your car is much more dangerous--over 100 fatalities per day in the US (http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx), but we don't see them on the evening news.
Of course this does not comfort you--you are human, and as such the cognitive heuristics you are employing are part of who you are. It would be silly not to make sure there were plans in place to minimize such dangers... but if this is something you are losing sleep over, that is an over-reaction. Understandable in the short time since the Illinois shooting, but if it keeps up, don't hesitate to mention it to your doctor or counselor.
I had a similar experience yesterday. I sit in the very front row in the lecture hall during my chemistry class. I realized, while the teacher was talking about equilibrium constants, that if someone armed and intent on shooting random kids in a lecture hall walked in, I'd probably be one of the first to get shot. I imagined where I could hide and how likely it would be for me to sneak out unnoticed and unharmed. Not likely.
This isn't the kind of thing I want to think about. I missed a good five minutes of the lecture in a sort of nightmarish daydream.
I wonder if they're going to lock the lecture hall doors so that they can only be opened from the inside? Late students would have to knock and would be let in at the discretion of the professor.
I always think this stuff doesn't have an effect on me, but I was so wrong. I'm not necessarily afraid to go to class, but it's rough spending a good portion of class wondering when someone is going to burst into the room and shower it with bullets. Chemistry is hard enough without that distraction.
I'd also like to add I don't believe the chances are high that I'll ever witness a school shooting...but that so soon after a string of them, and with the media coverage and images of blood-splattered students, it's easy to get caught up in a "what if" moment or two.
Of course, the chances were low for the kids at NIU, too.
It's like rape or lynching or crime: it intimidates. You're usually safe anywhere, but you're never always safe anywhere.
Aha! I found it. This whole Google now doing the searching business for Science Blogs really isn't working for me. If I search for the word "walked" for exampled (i searched that word because I remembered you wrote the word "walked" in this post) It shows the excerpt of your post where you say "walked" yet it doesn't provide the link to that post, instead it provides the link to the archive you put the post in. Now that is stupid.