New approved document discourages students and faculty to handle guns on campus.

Published by May 9, 2018 | By Lena Zhu

On Tuesday, April 17, the University Senate unanimously approved of a document that construed that teachers and students should not be carrying guns on the school campus.

The document, created by Dr. Barry Mascari of the Counselor Education Department and Dr. Christopher Lynch from the Communication Department, further states that only those who have the authority and practice to carry guns (i.e campus police) will be able to carry guns onto the campus.

This document essentially alerts the Kean community that only campus police should be able to have guns and also “commits to the awareness training that creates a ‘see it; say it’ culture on this campus.”

The prohibiting guns to students and teachers document was made in respect to the student movement from the Parkland High School shooting. The vote for this document was unanimous.

Dr. Patrick Ippolito, the head of the University Senate, had enough of thoughts and prayers.

“A lot of times these movements do not have the staying power that we like them to have. I just hope the potential [power] stays until November,” Dr. Ippolito said.

He hopes that the power of the movement held by the Parkland High School students will have a lasting impact and steer voters to a candidate that will substantially make an impact and put a minimize gun violence.

Dr. Lynch spoke of another idea that may be a root cause to the mass shootings.

“Men are living in an age where their identity is being questioned,” Dr. Lynch said.

Lynch spoke of more modern TV sitcoms where women are taking more leadership roles. On television, men, in the family structure, are now portrayed as an extra child of which the wife has to take care.

“In some families the children are the adults and the adults are playing the children. I think this affects the way how men see themselves,” Dr. Lynch said.

What could be a possible cause of these mass shootings? Dr. Lynch and Dr. Ippolito have a video games may be a part of the problem.

“There was a time where people thought there were many things corrupting our youth. Video Games tend to be violent. They tend to kind of promote a numbness to kill these creatures of people,” Dr. Ippolito said.

If played in an unhealthy amount, who can tell the difference between fiction and reality?

Dr. Lynch held a similar standpoint. Concerning videogames and violence, he believes that video games may be a minor component of the larger issue at hand.

Two theories, Catharsis Theory and Instigation Theory, may help to explain the behavior that the society is leading itself into.

Catharsis theory, according to Dr. Lynch, “basically says that when we see violence on TV or read novels with violence, it become an emotional outlet for release.”

The theory itself essentially states that through experiencing TV and reading novels with violence, should be able to reduce one’s aggression or negative feeling.

Another theory called the Instigation Theory which drives at the fact that watching and experiencing TV and reading novels with violence creates even more violent energy.

“If there is a problem with videogames, I think it is a problem of how we socialize with people in our society. We are very competitive in our games,” Dr. Lynch said. “The World Wide Wrestling Foundation is very popular. There are many messages that say that we must win and compete with one another.”

Even though we had the Columbine and Las Vegas shootings before the Parkland shooting, Dr. Lynch was driven to make this document with the “Never Again” Movement led by the students of Parkland High.

“I am not sure. I guess we got a point as a society where ‘oh now this happened again’ kind of perspective,” Dr. Ippolito said. “I think what energized other people, or my perspective, was the stance that students had at the high school.”

Dr. Lynch liked the energy and stance of the Parkland students.

“There has been so much pro-gun lobbying over the last couple of years that people had become frustrated. I think we fell into this pattern what I call learned helplessness and people just finally said ‘we can’t light vigil candles and pray anymore,’ We have to do something more. I think there was a movement in the Faculty Senate that we wanted to support this as well.”

After the Parkland shooting, President Trump had spoken about the aftermath. However, Trump had made promises that he could not keep regarding the shootings.

“The president said that he wanted to put more money into mental health issues,” said Dr. Ippolito. “We minimized the ability to get help. We set up a situation where we have inclusive classrooms. We closed a lot of hospitals where they dealt with those issues.”

Dr. Ippolito suggests that we need to continue the debate against gun violence and keep the issue in front of us.

Dr. Lynch proposed something else teaching our kids.

“I think what we have to do is to teach critical thinking so that they can see all sides of the issues, so they can be involved an aware,” Lynch said.

He also noted that there are a lot of Americans out there who believe that their vote doesn’t count. He believes that we need to combat this idea and do as much as we can.

“The first step that anyone can do in a concrete way is to vote and become educated,” Dr. Lynch said. “There are so many ‘alternate facts’. Learn how to sort out what is true and what is false and act on it.”

Groups on campus like Be the Change work hard to advocate and bring awareness to current social affairs in the media today. Even though Be the Change is a specific group, Ippolito also said there should not be a reason why fraternities and sororities cannot also be politically active.

“We also talked to campus police and told them they need to do more programs for students and faculty to keep us alert and how to handle such situations when this happens on campus,” Ippolito said.

As far as implementing the new document, Lynch says that is still unknown.

“The danger is that things get buried and forgotten in the hectic pace of life. We all have our own unique stresses,” Dr. Lynch said. “What I hope happens is that we can make a little contribution. And we can get the campus community to reflect on gun violence and hopefully take a stand.”

---