On November 13, 2022, Tragedy Struck At The University Of Virginia. Christopher Darnell Jones, Jr., a student and former member of the University‘s football team, joined other students on a field trip to Washington, DC. Suddenly and without seeming provocation, he opened gun fire on the bus. In an instant, fellow students Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis, Jr., and D’Sean Perry lost their lives. Others who were shot and survived the attack included Michael Hollins, a running back on the University’s football team, and Marlee Morgan.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA - AUGUST 16: Hundreds of people march peacefully with lit candles across the ... [+]
Those gun shots on the evening of November 13 traumatized the University’s usually idyllic community. Following a lockdown of the Grounds (a term of tradition at the University that to others connotes “campus”), an investigation ensued, leading to the arrest of the perpetrator and an intense search for clues as to motives.
This incident at the University of Virginia (“The University”) became the first of a series of shootings in the United States during the month of November. On the 19th, a gunman entered an LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs and opened fire, killing five people and leaving 25 others injured. Approximately three days later, a mass shooting occurred at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, that left six people dead. The shooter, an employee of the store, took his own life by turning the gun on himself.
Since the violence in Chesapeake, there have been nine mass shootings in the United States. According to statistics kept by the Gun Violence Archive, these incidents have occurred in Pennsylvania, Maryland, California, Texas, Illinois, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana.
While gun violence anywhere shocks the conscience, its seemingly growing occurrence on educational venues is particularly unsettling. Some of the most disturbing shootings have occurred on the site of elementary schools, high schools, and college campuses.
On April 20, 1999, two teenagers went on a shooting spree, killing 13 people and wounding more than 20 others at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. A shooting occurred on January 16, 2002, at the Appalachian School of Law, where a distressed student shot and killed three people and injured three others. On April 16, 2007, on the campus of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, Virginia, an undergraduate student shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others. Five years later on December 14, 2012, a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, left 28 people dead and two others injured. Among the victims were children between the age of six and seven years old. Earlier in 2022, a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Ulvade, Texas.
The angst associated with shootings on educational venues relates to the commonly held belief that classrooms and campuses are special places. Pedagogical enterprises take place there with individuals engaged in intellectual and social exchanges within presumably safe havens. Shootings destroy this perception and replace the façade of safety with the harsh realization that no place in society is immune from the dangers of gun violence.
Shootings on educational venues prompt considerable introspection and examination. The resultant grief leads to questions of why these incidents have become more prevalent and what can be done to prevent them. Answers to these questions become elusive given the nature of the complex democracy in which we live. While post hoc consolation has become a universal norm in the aftermath of these shootings, society has not devised concrete, efficacious solutions that lead to prevention. Embedded in the search for solutions is the fundamental struggle to balance autonomous rights of ownership as defined in the Second Amendment with society’s need for public safety and security.
Any attempt to balance autonomy and the public good is fraught with political overtones, with strong feelings on both sides of the ideological spectrum. Perhaps a more concerted focus on the need to protect educational spaces constitutes a commonly acceptable goal that would lead to meaningful solutions. Achievement of that goal will require a holistic approach that addresses the causes of gun violence and suggests prudently effective means to ameliorate, and hopefully prevent, the devastation occurring in its wake.
The University of Virginia, which has been thrust into the vortex of the gun violence conundrum, stands especially situated to become a fulcrum for this discussion. As one of the nation’s preeminent and well-respected public institutions, the University possesses resources that would facilitate meaningful exploration of the means to secure educational spaces. That discussion would no doubt include an examination of the humanistic impacts of gun violence, including ministering to grief of communities at large and exploration of reasonable and effective means of prevention.
The University has already demonstrated the facility to address the humanistic aspects associated with these traumatic events. Immediately following the shooting on November 13, the administration of the University rapidly coordinated containment and investigative procedures with state authorities. Transparency, coupled with an intense focus on the emotional toll exacted by the shootings, became hallmarks of the University’s response.
Every constituent group of the University, including most notably its alumni, came together to comfort those deeply affected by the shootings and worked collaboratively to secure stability. As President Jim Ryan shared publicly:
On an incredibly sad and frightening day, people in every corner of this community responded to secure our grounds, keep us all informed, comfort those most deeply affected, and finally apprehend the suspect. This does not make up for the tragic loss of our students, but it is a reminder that this community remains compassionate, caring, and committed even in the face of tragedy.
The totality of the University’s actions on the humanitarian front provided a template for other institutions similarly impacted by traumatic shootings.
The University also seems uniquely positioned to lead discussions of viable means to reduce, or possibly prevent, mass shootings. Solutions will involve not only issues associated with the access to guns and the autonomous rights of ownership, but also concomitant issues related to mental and emotional and public safety. Discovery of these solutions will require an interdisciplinary approach that includes such topics as law, government, politics, psychology, medicine, and sociology, just to name a few.
The University possesses extraordinary resources that would contribute mightily to an interdisciplinary study of shootings on educational venues. Its Departments of Politics, Psychology, and Sociology are all nationally recognized in terms of pedagogy and scholarly output. The University’s School of Medicine has earned top rankings for both research and primary care and has a recognized commitment to public service. The University of Virginia School of Law, which ranks as one of the most prestigious in the nation, has nationally recognized scholars with an expertise in many of the applicable disciplines. Their participation would add considerable substance to the discussion of the autonomy/public needs balance.
Coordination of an interdisciplinary effort might fit well within the charge of the Karsh Institute of Democracy, a relatively recent center established at the University that fosters nonpartisan, civil debate on issues of national importance. The Institute also accelerates collaboration among the University’s established national programs including the Center for Politics, the initiatives undertaken by the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Miller Center for Public Affairs, and the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. Marshaling these resources would likely include outreach to other colleges and universities and include constituents on either side of the ideological divide.
In some ways, the University has already demonstrated its capacity to serve as a catalyst for civil discussions that ameliorate the effects of traumatic events. Its response in the aftermath of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally, which included a march of white nationalists on the historic Lawn of the University and the tragic death of Heather Heyer, led to institutional initiatives that galvanized the University’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, free speech and assembly, and professionalism, including its subsets of civility and mutual respect. The University drew recognition for its ability to promote healing of its community while coping with the precarious balance of autonomous rights and public safety.
The gunfire that killed three students and wounded others on the Grounds has thrust the University into a challenge similar to what it faced after the “Unite the Right” rally in 2017. It rose to the challenge then with historic resolve and reputational prowess. It will no doubt do so again as it copes with the aftermath of the tragic shootings on November 13.
The University’s response to this latest tragedy on Grounds will undoubtedly be holistic, marshaling its own resources to derive appropriate procedures to respond the human need for healing and discovering effective solutions for prevention. When it does, the University, other educational institutions, and society as a whole will become fortunate beneficiaries. A thriving, complex democracy deserves nothing less.
