Media fearmongering-the aftermath

[BlaqueKatt]

Student gives presentation and professor calls police (http://therecorderonline.net/2009/02/24/professor-called-police-after-student-presentation/?wtf)


On October 3, 2008, Wahlberg and two other classmates prepared to give an oral presentation for a Communication 140 class that was required to discuss a “relevant issue in the media”. Wahlberg and his group chose to discuss school violence due to recent events such as the Virginia Tech shootings that occurred in 2007

Shortly after his professor, Paula Anderson, filed a complaint with the CCSU Police against her student.

That night at work, Wahlberg received a message stating that the campus police “requested his presence”. Upon entering the police station, the officers began to list off firearms that were registered under his name, and questioned him about where he kept them.

“If you can’t talk about the Second Amendment, what happened to the First Amendment?” asked Sara Adler, president of the Riflery and Marksmanship club on campus. “After all, a university campus is a place for the free and open exchange of ideas.”


The student went over various topics, such as concealed carry on campus and the professor called the police, would this teacher have done the same for a por/anti death penalty or pro/anti abortion presentation? After all those topics may make students uncomfortable as well, or is it just the media fearmongering of guns that allowed this student to be harassed? And yes I say he was harassed-he presented a topic that was relevant to the class and the police print up a list of his LEGALLY Registered firearms to question him. He made no threat of violence, why did this professor feel the need to register a complaint against him? The media instilled fear of the "big bad" gun.

These are the most common arguments against concealed carry on campus (http://www.concealedcampus.org/common_arguments.php) refuted-for educational purposes only.

[AdminAssistant]

Okay, I have to say that I am uncomfortable with the idea of students legally carrying a firearm into my classroom. And I would be uncomfortable with a student using my class as a political platform on an obviously volatile topic. This could have been prevented if the professor had required approval for topics, and then just said, "No, you can't talk about this is in my class" Yes, the professor does have that right. If one of my students in Intro to Theatre decides they want to make a big speech on abortion or gun control or whatever, I absolutely have the right to tell them to get the hell out of my classroom.

Professors (TA's, anyone who teaches college) go through safety training. Any sign that something might be amiss, or any sign of discomfort, and we are supposed to call the police. The idea of a student in a classroom saying that we should allow guns in classrooms would make me feel threatened.

And besides - why do you think he presented on this topic? To get attention. Well, he did.

[BlaqueKatt]

Okay, I have to say that I am uncomfortable with the idea of students legally carrying a firearm into my classroom.

from what I linked for educational purposes-you hit one right on the head-

“In most states with ‘shall-issue’ concealed carry laws, the rate of concealed carry is about 1%. That means that one person out of 100 is licensed to carry a concealed handgun. Therefore, statistically speaking, a packed 300-seat movie theater contains three individuals legally carrying concealed handguns, and a shopping mall crowded with 1,000 shoppers contains ten individuals legally carrying concealed handguns. Students who aren't too afraid to attend movies or go shopping and who aren't distracted from learning by the knowledge that a classmate might be illegally carrying a firearm shouldn't be distracted from learning by the knowledge that a classmate might be legally carrying a firearm.”


This could have been prevented if the professor had required approval for topics, and then just said, "No, you can't talk about this is in my class" Yes, the professor does have that right.

that's censorship pure and simple, censorship in any form is wrong-restricting the right to freedom of speech is NOT a professor's right, as I don't believe the constitution is automatically suspended on a college campus. "I may not agree with what you have to say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" ring any bells?

If one of my students in Intro to Theatre decides they want to make a big speech on abortion or gun control or whatever, I absolutely have the right to tell them to get the hell out of my classroom.

Apples to oranges-that would not be relevant to your class-this teacher specifically requested "a relevant issue in the media" the student complied, with the teacher's instructions. How is saying "current concealed carry permit holders should be allowed to carry their weapons on campus just as they do to the mall, grocery store, theatre, office building" etc. a "threat".

The idea of a student in a classroom saying that we should allow guns in classrooms would make me feel threatened.

If ideas make you feel threatened, maybe the scaremongering should be addressed-again if you live in one of the 40 "shall issue" states 1 out of ever 100 people you come in contact with daily statistically speaking is armed, do you feel threatened leaving your house? Are you even aware what it takes to get a CCP?

another article about the media influence (http://gunowners.org/sk0304.htm)-specifically references two school shootings stopped by legal CCP holders-and the subsequent media coverage omitting totally or obscuring those facts

and another (http://gunowners.org/sk0302.htm)

[Greenday]

The problem is clearly with the teacher, not the student. The teacher picked the guidelines, the student picked an extremely relevant topic. The teacher had no valid reasoning for feeling the need to call the cops. If it was supposed to be on something controversial, the teacher should have approved all topics. That's on the teacher. There is nothing threatening about the topic of concealed carry. I mean, come on, it's a freaking class speech, not a public forum. No one actually tries to use those classes for real public persuasion.

[AdminAssistant]

For the record, both of my parents have concealed carry and DO carry. And yes, I'm uncomfortable with it. I've had bad experiences with guns in the past, I've lived close to a place with a school shooting and felt that fear of going to school. So, I have a personal issue with firearms in general.

Yes, one person might be a responsible gun owner. But people, especially 18-22 year old undergrads, are generally not known for responsibility and ability to properly react to panic situations. If you doubt this, allow me to regale you with stories of students going into complete panic attacks over a paper not printing or an e-mail not going through. If someone does make a threatening move in my class, I am the one that is trained in how to handle it. Not a senior who has seen a few too many Dirty Harry movies.

Honestly, without knowing exactly what was in the student's presentation..it's hard to say. It could have been relatively unbiased material, but the manner in which the student presented it could have been the issue. It may have been a younger, less experienced professor (since it is a 100-level course) who just got a little freaked out.

Greenday, these 2nd Amendment groups on campuses tend to be small but very loud. If he wasn't trying to persuade people, then why would he choose that topic?

[Sylvia727]

I'm not sure where CCSU is; the rest of my post assumes it is located within the US of A.

That means that one person out of 100 is licensed to carry a concealed handgun. Therefore, statistically speaking, a packed 300-seat movie theater contains three individuals legally carrying concealed handguns, and a shopping mall crowded with 1,000 shoppers contains ten individuals legally carrying concealed handguns.

That doesn't mean that they are carrying handguns, just that they might be, legally. Not everyone who is licensed carries at all times. It's been my experience that those who have concealed carry permits do not always have a gun on their person.

that's censorship pure and simple, censorship in any form is wrong-restricting the right to freedom of speech is NOT a professor's right

The professor can certainly say whether a certain topic is appropriate or not for her classroom. Censorship would be when she bans a certain position on the topic, and not other positions on that topic. I've had professors tell us that we cannot present on abortion or gay marriage, simply because extended debates on hot button issues is not within the scope of the course. Censorship would also be when the professor bans the students from discussing it amonst themselves. When a student makes a presentation to the class, they are in part teaching that class. The professor has the right to make the final call on that.

For a student to say "Students should have the right to carry guns into classrooms," within the context of their assignment, is not a threat. The professor requested and received a presentation on a current issue, nothing more, nothing less. For a professor to have a student interrogated by campus police is a threat. The student was absolutely justified in skipping the next few classes until things got straightened out. There was no basis for suspicion. The student argued in favor of preventing violence, not causing it. For the police to investigate the student is a needless violation of privacy. The university should come down on this professor for unprofessional conduct, and the student should keep an eye on his grades to be sure that his marks don't suffer from the professor's bias. Those cops should be investigated and disciplined by their superiors. They abused their authority.

ETA: Response to AdminAssistant.

I'm not arguing in favor of guns on school campuses. In my mind, that is an entirely separate issue. The problem discussed in the article was the teacher's overreaction to the student's comments.

[BlaqueKatt]

I've had bad experiences with guns in the past, I've lived close to a place with a school shooting and felt that fear of going to school. So, I have a personal issue with firearms in general.

so you'd rather everyone be sitting ducks, so you're comfortable?, Apparently the "gun-free zones" don't work-google Pearl, Mississippi-school shooting, or Appalachian school of law shooting-both stopped by faculty/students with CCP-ASL shooter was on the way to get more ammo and punched an unarmed person in the face when he tried to stop him-the two armed stopped and disarmed him 11 minutes before the police arrived-body count for both of those shootings was 2, compare to columbine, VT and others.

But people, especially 18-22 year old undergrads, are generally not known for responsibility and ability to properly react to panic situations.

Nice try, you have to be 21 to legally own a handgun in most states and 21 to obtain a CCP(except for Alaska and Vermont)-and you may want to let the US Military know that their 18-22 year-old soldiers are not known for responsibility.

If someone does make a threatening move in my class, I am the one that is trained in how to handle it.

So are any of your students with prior military or martial arts training, and I'm sure there are a few at your campus somewhere. Are you trained to disarm an opponent twice your size? Are you trained to take down someone while you yourself are injured? I am.

[BroomJockey]

you may want to let the US Military know that their 18-22 year-old soldiers are not known for responsibility.


Except soldiers tend to have firearms safety drilled in to them for hours, and hours, and hours before ever going to a range, and those who don't get it don't get to go. Slight difference there.

And yes, media scare-mongering's a bad issue. It makes people want to carry guns to "protect themselves." However, since there's no way to prove anything psychologically, how many of these people get a gun with the mentality of "If anyone tries anything, I'm gonna blow them away!"? If there's a situation going on, the last thing the police need are another gun in the mix, especially one they're not sure of the intentions of. You say it can end a situation, I say it can escalate one. Someone takes hostages, one of them's CCW. He tries to draw down, hostage-taker wins. All of a sudden there's a dead/grievously injured person in the mix. After that point, the HT may just say "Fuck it, in for a penny, in for a pound." Now you've got someone unwilling to give up and make a non-violent end to the situation.

Finally, and worst of all, college students are known for an excess of exuberance and energy. Some group decides to pull a prank that involves any of a number of factors that can be misinterpreted as a danger situation, the CCW person then shoots a prankster, who was never a threat to begin with.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence I know wikipedia's not the best site to use as supporting evidence, but it's good enough for this. The US has one of the highest rates of homicides involving guns in the Westerized world. Turning every situation involving gun violence into a "Kill or be killed" situation sure as heck isn't the answer to turning that statistic around.


PS. Nice trick with the "for educational purposes." I c wat u did thar.

[AdminAssistant]

so you'd rather everyone be sitting ducks, so you're comfortable?...

Nice try, you have to be 21 to legally own a handgun in most states and 21 to obtain a CCP(except for Alaska and Vermont)-and you may want to let the US Military know that their 18-22 year-old soldiers are not known for responsibility.
...
So are any of your students with prior military or martial arts training, and I'm sure there are a few at your campus somewhere. Are you trained to disarm an opponent twice your size? Are you trained to take down someone while you yourself are injured? I am.

I don't want everyone to be 'sitting ducks', but there are a lot...a LOT of people out there with legal firearms that I wouldn't trust with anything more dangerous than a butter knife. Oh, and the Westside shootings? Those little boys killed 5 people with rifles that were legally purchased and licensed, and they were completely trained in gun safety. That didn't stop me from looking at the fence row between the school and cafeteria for a good year, wondering if there was someone hiding in the bushes waiting to take out students.

I wasn't referring to soldiers, I was referring to college students. Whiny, irresponsible, sheep-like college students. And there are plenty over 21 who don't know their ass from their elbow. I read the arguments article you posted - and dorms would absolutely not be a safe place to store firearms AND there are plenty over 21 who live in campus housing.

When I talked about handling situations, I meant "received training by the University in how to handle threatening situations". Not "know how to kill someone with one hand". What they tell us are ways to predict off-behavior, look for signs of threats, and, when in doubt, call the police. I simply do not trust the judgement of these kids. Say I have someone stand up in class and approach me in a threatening manner. Should a senior make the call that this person deserves to die? In that situation - would they aim properly? Or would there be a better chance they would hit another student or myself? (I do know how to defend myself against someone, btw.)

And professors do have every right to control what goes on in the classroom. When my students perform scenes, I have to approve the scenes. In a communications class, I would ask them to run their topics by me first - and we'd have a discussion about appropriateness of topics. So, yes, the professor should have done that.

[Rapscallion]

that's censorship pure and simple, censorship in any form is wrong-restricting the right to freedom of speech is NOT a professor's right, as I don't believe the constitution is automatically suspended on a college campus. "I may not agree with what you have to say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" ring any bells?


The First Amendment over in the US says that government will not restrict free speech. I'm not certain how your universities and colleges are funded. However, even if they're funded by the government, you still would be unlikely to be able to get away with standing up in the middle of a lecture and screaming profanity all the way through and not find yourself in trouble.

If it's a private institution, then all bets are off - private institutions can do what they want regarding free speech.

Rapscallion

[Rapscallion]

The student went over various topics, such as concealed carry on campus and the professor called the police, would this teacher have done the same for a por/anti death penalty or pro/anti abortion presentation? After all those topics may make students uncomfortable as well, or is it just the media fearmongering of guns that allowed this student to be harassed? And yes I say he was harassed-he presented a topic that was relevant to the class and the police print up a list of his LEGALLY Registered firearms to question him. He made no threat of violence, why did this professor feel the need to register a complaint against him? The media instilled fear of the "big bad" gun.


Actually, most of the fear I see spread comes from the pro-gun lobby. I've recently come to the realisation that the real reason the pro-gun lobby doesn't want better control of firearms is that the current laws in the US allow guns to fall into the hands of ... morons and irresponsible people. If they didn't have guns easily available, the pro-gun crew would be without their bugbear of 'If a loonie went wild with a gun and all us responsible people had guns, we'd be able to stop him - fear gun control!"


These are the most common arguments against concealed carry on campus (http://www.concealedcampus.org/common_arguments.php) refuted-for educational purposes only.

Student gives presentation and professor calls police (http://therecorderonline.net/2009/02/24/professor-called-police-after-student-presentation/?wtf)

*disclaimer*this is not a debate on gun control, this is a debate about media scaremongering taking away the right to free speech.


Yeah, that looks like you're saying don't take it into gun control areas and then doing just that in the same post. Don't play games. If you want to debate gun law in the US, there are plenty of threads where you can do that.

Rapscallion

[BlaqueKatt]

real reason the pro-gun lobby doesn't want better control of firearms is that the current laws in the US allow guns to fall into the hands of ... morons and irresponsible people.

and those are mostly illegal

if you remove guns from law abiding persons the only ones that have them are criminals, as they don't care about the laws.

Unbiased source(not the gun lobby or anti-gun) (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=15304)

Though lawmakers responsible for passing the ban promised a safer country, the nation's crime statistics tell a different story:

* Countrywide, homicides are up 3.2 percent;

* Assaults are up 8.6 percent;

* Amazingly, armed robberies have climbed nearly 45 percent;

* In the Australian state of Victoria, gun homicides have climbed 300 percent;

* In the 25 years before the gun bans, crime in Australia had been dropping steadily;

* There has been a reported "dramatic increase" in home burglaries and assaults on the elderly.





Yeah, that looks like you're saying don't take it into gun control areas and then doing just that in the same post. Don't play games.

and I edited that out after it started to become one-check the edit on that post-apparently the edit didn't take-I'll re edit the post-I swear I took that out less than 10 minutes after posting-before the first response as I realized it would turn into one anyway

[Rapscallion]

WND? Unbiased? This is the rather right-wing christian 'news' source?

I think you'll have to work harder to find something that is genuinely unbiased.

I'll try and remember to come back to this since I'm shortly to head for work.

Rapscallion

[Rapscallion]

* Countrywide, homicides are up 3.2 percent;


How many of these involved firearms? Prove that this increase wouldn't have happened anyway.


* Assaults are up 8.6 percent;


With firearms?


* Amazingly, armed robberies have climbed nearly 45 percent;


Guns? Knives? Frozen salami?

* In the Australian state of Victoria, gun homicides have climbed 300 percent;

What were the amounts before and after? One gun homicide one year followed by a year of three would be a three hundred percent rise, or would it require four? I've never been sure. What other reasons could there be for this? Gang shootout?

* In the 25 years before the gun bans, crime in Australia had been dropping steadily;

Relevant how?

* There has been a reported "dramatic increase" in home burglaries and assaults on the elderly.

With guns? Oh, you think old people (the group most likely to suffer from dementia or high risk of broken bones from recoil...) should own guns?

That tells us about Australia, and like Britain it's a very different culture to the US. We went over this in the thread about British gun laws started by DitchDJ. You can't apply the same rules in different cultures and expect them to work the same.

So, about this feminism thing?

Rapscallion

[Evandril]

that's censorship pure and simple, censorship in any form is wrong-restricting the right to freedom of speech is NOT a professor's right, as I don't believe the constitution is automatically suspended on a college campus. "I may not agree with what you have to say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" ring any bells?


If the student wanted to stand up and give their speech outside of class, that would have been fine. He was giving a presentation in class, and as such, it is within the professor's right to restrict what is said. Heck, that is part of his *JOB*, to limit what is said to what is relevant for the class. Do I feel he acted correctly in this situation? No. Do I feel he has the right to control what presentations are given within his classroom? Yes. If you want to go into a class about Woman's History, and give a speech about the marvels of peanut butter, you're going to fail...is that censorship?

[AFPheonix]

But the difference between your scenario and what happened in the OP was that the presentation in the OP was actually topical.

If the prof wanted veto power over projects, then he should have had the students submit their plans for their projects ahead of time. Anytime I had a large presentation in college that was SOP.
Since he didn't, the teacher was pretty much obliged to either deal with it or at least offer some debate time for all the students. What he did was wrong.
And seriously, low level Mass Comm classes are gonna have kids that are going to try to be edgy. That's what people that age do. This could have been a great teaching moment and opportunity for the students to work on their reasoning abilities, and the teacher screwed it up.

[Evandril]

Oh, agreed...My response was more to the blanket 'Freedom of speech' comment, than the teacher's actions. I should have made my dislike of the teacher's actions in this case more clear, my apologies. I do agree, the teacher could have used debate to find out more about the student's views on the topic, and THEN if there was still worry, let someone know...at a worst case senario, that is.

[Shangri-laschild]

I'm coming at this subject from the prespective of someone who works as a college police dispatcher.

If a professor is worried by a student, they need to tell us. It takes so much work to grill this into a teachers head and still, they don't always. From there, we get the details and decide if the student is a threat and if they need to be talked to, if it's something we should only worry about if it becomes a repeat thing, or if there is no threat. I don't know if that department over reacted. I know it would take a lot for us to get that much information. If the student just stated facts and said nothing frighting, then at most, we would just sit them down and give them a heads up. Just "by the way, when you say stuff like that, it worries people sometimes."

I can't think of a situation where we'd be getting a list of owned guns right off the bat and grilling the student, so in that respect, I'm thinking that the police might have gone a bit overboard on that one. I also know what kind of pressure it's like when something does happen though. We've had a bomb scare before and you're trying to do your job while half the people are pissed because they didn't like us evacuating classes and the other half wondered why we hadn't done it sooner and why the hell didn't we already have someone in cuffs. Not saying it makes freaking out and overreacting ok, but it's a bit of a tight line when you've got someone who seems a bit off.

The teacher definitely didn't do anything wrong though. And yes, a teacher can say "I don't want this topic spoken about in my class." Like another poster said, the trouble is when they only ban one half of it. I've had plenty of teachers decide that certain topics were just too emotional for people and they didn't want to deal with them. They have that right.

Much though I am for guns (with sufficient gun control), I agree that the pro gun side does just as much fearmongering as the anit gun side does.

[Greenday]

The teacher definitely didn't do anything wrong though. And yes, a teacher can say "I don't want this topic spoken about in my class." Like another poster said, the trouble is when they only ban one half of it. I've had plenty of teachers decide that certain topics were just too emotional for people and they didn't want to deal with them. They have that right.

The main problem, in my opinion, is that if there are topics that the teacher might think would be upsetting or something like that, they should have either given out restrictions when giving the topic or should have pre-approved the topics. The majority of the fault of it going that far was the teacher's fault.

[Shangri-laschild]

The main problem, in my opinion, is that if there are topics that the teacher might think would be upsetting or something like that, they should have either given out restrictions when giving the topic or should have pre-approved the topics. The majority of the fault of it going that far was the teacher's fault.

But the problem with that is, it might not have been the subject itself that the teacher found creepy. It could have been entirely how the student presented it that the teacher found creepy. In that case, it wouldn't be the teachers fault.

[AdminAssistant]

But the problem with that is, it might not have been the subject itself that the teacher found creepy. It could have been entirely how the student presented it that the teacher found creepy. In that case, it wouldn't be the teachers fault.

Exactly! And yes, it is POUNDED into our heads - signs to look for, being aware of any strange behavior.