Over the last four years, the University of California Santa Barbara has become as much my home as my childhood house designed and built by my father. In a way, it’s more my home than anywhere else — it is here I am coming into my own as a scholar and human being, it is here I have found a community of people who are in many respects closer to me than my own family.
On May 23, 2014, the very foundation of our world was shattered. Much ink has already rightfully been spilled over this surreal tragedy. To a certain extent many people (including myself) feel inured to such horrific events because the plain fact is that they are so common. If we were all to appropriately mourn each event such as this, we could not continue to be productive people able to carry out our day-to-day lives.
As a teaching assistant, I’ve had the privilege of teaching hundreds of wonderful students about the history of art. Within my department alone, four of the six who died were either current or previous students. I have the awful blessing of being able to say none were mine, although they were students of my colleagues. My colleagues will now have to negotiate how to confront those empty chairs in their classrooms. Our lecture hall for our Modern to Contemporary Art survey will be permanently missing two people. How could we have anticipated this moment?
The fact of the matter is if you spend your life living and working at a university, you have, as I did two weeks ago, wondered what you would do if someone were to come in and start shooting in the library stacks. To say these thoughts are born out of illogical paranoia is to deny the precedent that established them: School shootings — that very phrase — are part of the vernacular of American culture.
The survey course for which I am currently a teaching assistant canceled sections this week. Last Tuesday we discussed the coming week’s lesson plan, which was to be a section on feminism and performance art. We were to end class with a discussion of the Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz’s media performance In Mourning and In Rage from 1977 in which women cloaked in black responded to the “Hillside Strangler” case on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall. They were protesting the ways in which the media failed to appropriately address systemic violence against women (killers have targeted, raped, tortured, and murdered women specifically). Lacy and Labowitz’s piece is markedly remembered for the powerful chant these cloaked women uttered: “In memory of our sisters, we fight back!”
In the most terrible sense, this was the best and the worst week possible to teach this particular piece to my students. Five days before I would have taught this section, young women and men were the target of a young man’s ire because these women would not give what he had decided was rightfully his, that being their affections, bodies, and sex. Let us remember the piece is from 1977. This is 2014.
In academia, if a historian were to make an argument that a tragic event was primarily caused by only one thing, the argument would be labeled reductive, overgeneralized, and lacking nuance. Such is the case with the shootings in Isla Vista. This event is the result of not only issues concerning gun control, mental health care, and a culture of sexual entitlement, but rather a horrible confluence of all of the above. To say this event is unbelievable is to deny the possibility of believing that horror such as this exists — for it is no longer unbelievable; it is. As historians, our job is to try and make sense of seemingly aberrant and impossible events. It is our endeavor to figure out what conditions could lead to this kind of horrendous occurrence.
I implore everyone to think about these issues — gun control, mental health care, misogyny — as part of the larger fabric of our world. These issues engage with each other and transgress borders. It is our job to address each for what they are and recognize how they might intersect.
In mourning and in rage, in memory of our brothers and sisters, we must fight back.
Comments
It was, after all, misogyny and lack of gun control that caused the stabbing of the three males...
nomoresanity (anonymous profile)
May 30, 2014 at 6:58 p.m. (Suggest removal)
How about the lack of hope so many people have? How many kids growing up today (at least in California) are going to be able to own a house? How many people going to school are going to be saddled with having to pay endless student loan fees for years, if not decades? Think of how stressful it is now simply trying to resolve something over the phone, whether it's a medical bill, and insurance claim, or trying to get your cable t.v. to work. (Think call centers, long waits on hold, getting disconnected, and operators who barely speak English)
Our stressed out Warp 9 speed way of life is catching up with us, but most people don't dare admit it. I'm not dismissing the author's points, but we have to include overall stress levels in the discussion, and ask ourselves why people are so frantic nowadays, and this is getting lost among the polemics.
billclausen (anonymous profile)
May 30, 2014 at 9:56 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Kids today can afford houses all over this state. Education did not have to cost them an arm and leg with long term loans. That was their choice and their choice if they majored in gender studies instead of engineering. CoveredCalifornia has taken away all their health care cost worries.
And Transparent California tells you were all the great paying jobs are in government. Their only worry now is when the seed corn finally runs out because the Democrat stranglehold on this state does cause some concern for their future. Tell them to go into petroleum engineering and the sky is the limit.
foofighter (anonymous profile)
May 30, 2014 at 10:20 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Well Foo, I hear endless stories of doctors trapped in student loan hell for years after starting their practices.
billclausen (anonymous profile)
May 31, 2014 at 6:50 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Oh, and eventually, it may come to pass that the people who wait on you may take your subtle advice and move to Bakersfield.
Self-serve restaurants are such a bore.
billclausen (anonymous profile)
May 31, 2014 at 6:51 a.m. (Suggest removal)
A comment to nomoresanity: I will repeat what has already been said in various ways in numerous other forums and articles written in the last week. Misogyny hurts men too. Expectations that are grounded in misogynistic justifications about the ways men and women should relate to each other is something that can also damage men psychologically and physically, as we have seen tragically illustrated in Isla Vista. When one hears the word "misogyny" it is not a reason to become defensive, but rather it is a call to think carefully, as the author suggests, about how we can ALL work towards moving beyond such a way of thinking.
Regarding the question of gun control in light of the stabbing of three students: the larger issue here is recourse to violence as a means of solving problems. This is a cultural issue, which again as the author suggests, will require a large degree of sustained collective thought. In the meantime, however, we must also acknowledge that four other students (including the shooter) were killed by guns. These are, as we are all very well aware, four examples among countless others who have died under similar circumstances in the last several years. And we cannot forget the gang-related gun deaths that occur every single day in the United States. While improved gun control may not immediately solve the cultural issue of problem-solving through violence, it will help prevent access to means through which people can hurt and kill others and themselves. And will perhaps give us all more time to think.
mfbell (anonymous profile)
June 1, 2014 at 2:41 a.m. (Suggest removal)
So many words for so little information...
The districts and cities with the most strident gun control have typically had the highest rate of gun involved deaths so stating something again and again in your case does not necessarily make your point correct.
Plus, Latino gangs typically choose knives.
And no, I am not a member of the NRA.
At least you got one thing correct-this is a cultural issue.
nomoresanity (anonymous profile)
June 1, 2014 at 9:54 a.m. (Suggest removal)