With each issue of The College Voice, I try to follow the writers’ leads to figure out what matters most, moment to moment, for the Connecticut College community. This time, as our cover page indicates, the student body’s priority was clear: mass shootings. Where last issue, it seemed like everyone wanted to talk about the Olympics, we’ve since moved on to a more dire topic.
All that isn’t to say that this issue is all about mass shootings—it’s not. We have an update on Dr. Andrea Baldwin’s case and the retention of faculty of color, a report on Anthony Fantano’s visit and surrounding controversy, and a profile on Fire Marshal Vernon Skau, which I hope sheds some light on the newly-announced walk-throughs. So many pieces in this issue are deserving of a front-page spot, and although usually I cherry pick for the best stuff and vary the topics you see first, this issue is different.
The three cover stories aren’t even the only place you’ll find mentions of mass shootings: the subject shows up in the Spring Awakening review, too, and as anyone else who saw the show will probably remember, the show proves relevant to the topic. As Michael Shulman writes in the New Yorker, “the unregulated weapon, in [Spring Awakening], isn’t guns but sex.” Due to lack of meaningful attention, it kills.
Gun violence is a pressing issue, but not an isolated one, and we have to remember that. I have almost no reservations about foregrounding mass shootings in this issue, because almost everyone at Connecticut College seems to agree on its deep, horrifying importance. But that’s actually the one cause I have for reluctance.
While you can find some sort of ideological variety anywhere, here, the mass shooting issue is deeply uncontroversial. As an activist cause, it almost seems like low-hanging fruit. You don’t need much empathy to recognize gun violence as pressing and dangerous: in the event of a mass shooting, we would all be at risk. The only people who think they wouldn’t be seem to believe their guns will effectively counter those of attackers, but the rest of us seem to recognize our helplessness.
At the “Walkout for Our Lives,” I thought that while there certainly could’ve been more people present, the crowd was impressive for a demonstration at Connecticut College. It made me wonder if the whole group would’ve turned out in support of Black Lives Matter, or immigration reform, or trans rights. I have to say that I doubt I would’ve seen as many faces if the cause were dedicated to an identity-driven group more specific than “humanity.”
Despite my skepticism, student activism is a powerful tool on this campus, as on many others. Most seniors and staff members will remember that around this time three years ago, Conn was a hotbed for racism and activism alike. At the time I was a first-year staff writer for the Voice, and I remember watching then-editor in chief Ayla and managing editor Dana scramble to fit all the letters to the editor and public statements into these pages, opening the newspaper up like a blank canvas for public debate. I remember the campus as tense, mournful, and fearsome. And I remember that after all the Facebook posts, the vandalism, and the hatred—after all the demonstrations, the open fora, and the petitions—the students got the administration to instate a full-time Dean of Institutional Equity and Inclusion. The Spring of 2015 eventually got us John McKnight.
Whatever you think of DIEI—the job the office is doing, the people who work in it, etc.—its existence is living proof of the power of student activism. So yes, it’s good that we’re protesting national issues that affect everyone. But remember that this isn’t Florida: this state didn’t just pass a “school marshal” program to fund the arming of teachers, and legislation here tends to move in a roughly progressive direction. That doesn’t mean it’s enough, or that we shouldn’t fight for those who live or lived far away. But it does mean that sometimes, we need to look carefully inward, to see what we can change right here.
-Maia
