Guns, Pancakes, and Ambiguity

[beevul]

Guns, Pancakes, and Ambiguity

A professor has second thoughts about writing a recommendation for a student gun enthusiast

By Myrtle Lynn Payne APRIL 18, 2016

"Sarah" was a very nice young woman who turned up in one of my classes a year or so ago. Her academic abilities were not strong but she had great energy and was a class leader. Definitely a process, and not a content, type of gal. I did take special notice of her on the first day during a sharing activity we typically do at the beginning of my science lecture courses. Sarah shared that the most notable experience of her winter break was a visit to a gun range where she had fired an AK-47. I gave the usual "very good, moving on" response but was thinking, "Whoa, that’s disturbing."

Later, when Sarah was a student in another one of my courses, I overheard her confiding that she was looking forward to getting her concealed-carry permit. (Disclosure: I don’t teach in Texas.) I hadn’t known we had such permits in our state but apparently we do. Or did. Students could legally come to the campus armed until recently, when our legislature banned weapons from all state university campuses.

Last year at some point, Sarah said she was applying to a teacher-credential program and asked me for a recommendation. Initially I said yes because I usually do. I don’t know the exact date she asked, but I am thinking it must have been before the Umpqua Community College shooting last October because that’s when I really started thinking about students and guns. After Umpqua, colleagues and others specifically asked me if I felt safe on the campus and I had to think about that question. Our college’s "shelter-in-place" drills — in which whole buildings practice for an active-shooter situation — have not made me feel safe. I also did not feel safe during a visit to the campus police station where I was offered a free gun-safety lock.

How can I say that I don’t want to support students who are gun enthusiasts, without getting put on some sort of list? You know — Santa Shoot 2.0. I mean, she’s applying to a teacher-credential program, for God’s sake. I wish the way forward was more black and white to me — that I knew what to do in this situation. But I don’t.

Myrtle Lynn Payne is the pseudonym of an instructor in the sciences at a college in the western United States.

http://chronicle.com/article/Guns-PancakesAmbiguity/236154

Discuss.

[jonno99]

1. It seems to me that "Myrtle" needs to stop living in fear of inanimate objects - and start

judging folks by the content of their character.

[Brickbat]

2. "It seems to me no person who has truly experienced the full impact of their own emotions would ever

go near a gun."

Hi, projection!

This professor seems incapable of putting aside her own biases when it comes to writing a professional recommendation. If she can't write a recommendation for Sarah (it's unclear whether Sarah's abilities and merits would earn her one) because of what she knows about Sarah's interests, maybe she should screen everyone who comes to her for a recommendation about their beliefs.

[Straw Man]

3. I'm amused and appalled ...

... by the notion that lifting bans on campus carry somehow raises the risk of a mass shooting, as if the person who would contemplate such a heinous act would be in any way deterred by such a ban.

I'm a teacher. I shoot recreationally. I have a CCW permit, and I sometimes carry -- always within the law. I know a good number of teachers who do the same. I also know a good number of teachers who should never have gotten their credentials in the first place. The two sets do not overlap.

Just my experience, offered in contrast to Myrtle Lynn Paine's unfounded paranoia.

[Eleanors38]

4. This teacher needs to learn something about academic freedom...

It is one thing for a teacher to have this freedom so that she/he has the security and freedom to deal with unpopular even controversial subjects. But that freedom must be respected for their students as well. How can any student understand the power and necessity of academic freedom when they do not share in that freedom? How can anyone expect a future defense of that freedom when they have been denied it? This to say nothing of the instant instructor's evident prejudice and fears.

[Marengo]

5. She indeed belongs on a list, as in a list of formally employed teachers...

Expelled from their positions for prejudice and looking for a new line of work.

[DonP]

6. "How can I say that I don’t want to support students who are gun enthusiasts" - Easy!

Easy, just be honest and calmly tell your student that you're a bigot that judges people, not on the content of their character, their behavior and performance, but on your own petty fears and ignorant prejudices.

Hopefully she'll find someone less judgemental with far better character to ask for a reference.

[sarisataka]

7. Would she have similar reservations

if she overheard a student discussing her support/opposition to abortion, political candidates, LGBT...

There is one clear tell in the article that inadvertently highlights it is simply discrimination:

I don’t want to support students who are gun enthusiasts

[DonP]

9. Or substitute; "... discussing her Muslim faith" for gun ownership?

Makes me wonder of this "professor" would be as suitably outraged at the idea of discriminating against someone for their faith, skin color, or gender identity.

Or if she's just decided that this particular form of bigotry and discrimination is approved by some people.

[ileus]

8. How can someone who should be smart, be so dumb and irrational

Why does logic and reason fly out the window when the subject of firearms and self defense comes up?

[CompanyFirstSergeant]

10. The student is planning on becoming a teacher.

I had a concealed carry license the entire time I was a teacher.

The fact that I was a firearms enthusiast never crossed paths with my career. (See below for exceptions)

I even took the principal and several administrators shooting several times.

We met at a range near my house in the suburbs.

Except for the principal, all of my guests to the range were newbies (city types) and they had a great time.

The principal was a southern lady who had moved to NY to finish college and stayed.

Damn, could she shoot!

(Full disclosure - yes, I even took students shooting, sort of. We went to Civil War reenactments and they got to shoot blanks.)

I became friendly with one of the reenactors and he would bring accoutrements and rifles to the school.

In NYC.

There was never a problem. No one said anything except 'thank you for coming to our school.'