Gun Scare

I was delighted that my schedule last Wednesday gave me a large block of free time to drive into the city and have lunch with Dominic and Rekha. Dominic is the head of another independent school whom Rekha and I worked with for our final project for graduate school. However, while I was enjoying a crab sandwich, coleslaw, and conversation surrounded by the highest of brows at New York City's Harvard Club problems were brewing back at school.

I was unaware of the rolling storm but felt stressed anyway to work my way back to the midtown tunnel and tested my patience on the crowded Long Island Expressway. I arrived late to class and was immediately told of the day's commotion. We are studying transnational crime in my Global Issues elective course and I have assigned pairs to create lessons on various topics. The requirement includes a lecture, discussion, and homework assignment. The group presenting on the illegal trafficking of weapons asked students to investigate how easily one can buy firearms online and print out their evidence for class.

As a teacher I have learned that no more than 80% of my students will ever have a working printer at one time. In addition, replacing missing ink for most students requires an alignment of circumstances involving parent schedules, ink cartridge availability, and student initiative that occurs only slightly more frequently or predictably than high-magnitude earthquakes on the San Andreas fault. So it was no surprise that two students found themselves doing their "homework" in the library that morning.

It was a surprise to the librarian who noticed purchase procedures for semi automatic assault rifles, with detailed pictures, rolling off the printer.

In this day and age any educator should take a second glance at anything that seems out of the ordinary. This was harmless, but certainly out of the ordinary. Strike one. It doesn't help that my school believes strongly in non-violent resolution of conflict (weapons, camouflage, and even super hero capes are on the list of prohibited costume apparel for Halloween). Strike two. So, with print outs in hand the Dean of Students and Director of Technology were immediately summoned.

Fortunately the latter was able to point out the one of the print outs was an ebay listing for 1/12 scale models of guns: toys guns....for dolls. Ball one. The other print outs, while still a mystery to the group, showed only pictures of weapons and their prices. Nobody was ordering weapons. Ball two. The group decided to go "Mission Impossible" and start scanning active desktop images of various computers in the library to determine which computer summoned the offending images and who was sitting in front of it: two senior girls, one of which recently hit the other in the face with a bat. Fortunately this occured in softball practice and the only real trouble either had seen in their upper school careers was not more serious than a citation for being late to class. Ball three. A confrontation with the girls led to an explanation of the assignment and a polite apology for any fuss they may have caused. Ball four. Both girls walk... freely from the library.

The girls were still a little uneasy about whether or not they were in trouble (they weren't) when I arrived and their concern had spread to others in the class. I checked in with the librarian and any concern had already been well smoothed over, although they were still a little confused about the assignment. Our fine librarian felt a little silly for making such a big fuss but was she wrong?

Little things like this have become the unnoticed warning signs of some of our greatest tragedies. We have been urged to notice the dots of concern before a very troubled student connects them into a massacre. The images of Columbine remain surprisingly clear for many educators and I work on a campus where we smelled the acrid smoke of burning rubble when the winds changed in our direction on 9/13. While it's easy to think an investigation in this case was an overreaction I also feel that we need to be brave about following our suspicions. Our world encourages us to report lonely bags, odd activity, and even the slightest hunch of danger. However, I can only commit to doing so if we are also willing to keep packing our travel bags, not shy away from activities that some may deem as odd, and follow our instincts to see the best in peoples intentions. Maintaining such a world means we may need to blow the whistle to keep others safe from time to time but also provide others the respect deserved by a simple benefit of the doubt. Balancing these two concerns will be one of the greatest challenges my students face in the future. At least bigger than refilling their ink cartridges.