shishnit.org

Being an employee at the largest private for profit University in the United States it would be crazy for me not to acknowledge the shootings at Virginia Tech.  It has been the buzz nearly all day here at work.  Discussions about security measures and ideas about them are on the lips of everyone I know.  The fact of the matter is that in the position I hold I am probably one of the most vulnerable to any attack that may ever occur.  I am nearly on top of the front door and I would be the first targeted for anyone trying to make entrance.  Entrance is easily made by any student and or any person for that matter.  My one in-direct boss had a conference call today regarding safety and afterwards this is what I wrote to him: 

J.
 
If someone decides to walk into this building at 7 p.m. or later with a gun……make sure you tell Rick I have a small insurance policy through the company….because no matter what….I’m dead.  Poof gone….  Unless I’m allowed to bring a gun to work…if someone has intent to harm like the incident that occurred this morning elsewhere…I’m gone.  Just erect a statue of a butterfly in my name or some such silliness after the fact and put my name in lights and lie about just how great I was.
 
There is no real way to safeguard against guns except to be in a building manned by security who have metal detectors.  Are we going to budget in Metal Detectors?  I think not.  And what person on a mission cares that they just violated a metal detector? No one. 

If someone gives me too much crap I’m going to lie to them and tell them that God is in the back office and will help as soon as I go get him…and then I’m going to run in there and call the POOOlice pronto while crawling under a desk to do it.  I’m not putting my life on someone else at this company answering their phone or not after 7 p.m. at night.  Once I see the police lights…I’ll call someone else.
 
Kristy
 
p.s.  the security guard here will never save me…..he’s too old and frail but I’ll do my best to give him fair warning…that is if I see him and can figure out how to warn him in Spanish. 

While to many my email seems humorous my points were well taken because let’s not talk about security codes and code words we can call each other and use in light of today’s events.  Let’s not talk about panic buttons that I could push and then die afterwards of a gunshot wound.  If someone has intent to cause harm and violence of that nature no security camera, gate, etc. will stop them.   It’s not my attempt at humor but rather the truth.  If someone were to walk into the building where I work, I would likely be the first to go.  There was talk today of panic buttons and secret messages to one another.  I don’t think anyone at Virginia Tech could have handled anything better than they did.  Violence is something that attacks without warning, comes swiftly and unexplained and with intent to create panic and death.  Any act of violence serves as a reminder to how fragile life is.  How sacred of a gift it is.  

I know that I will walk on eggshells for a few days, maybe even weeks.  I have had confrontations with individual students who do not like the message I portray and therefore want to blame the message on the messenger and therefore I am constantly aware of my personal safety.  But not to this extent do I ever think about life and death as the absolute finite line that it can be.  I mostly have always considered how easy it would be for a small group of disgruntled students to jump me and kick my ass to smithereens.  My secondary thought after that is that I would sue the company and retire to Boca Raton.  But I think these thoughts are due to the fact that it’s so damned hard to fathom this type of violence coming to fruition to ourselves. 

I often want to believe that everything happens for a reason and that for every action there is a “good outcome” reaction somewhere in the world.  But sometimes…sometimes like today…I just think that some things just flat out suck and there is no good reason that they take place. 

For all of those people that had plans for “later today” but “later today” never came…..I’m sorry.