A Rare Bear Screams but Does Anyone Care?

This morning, Chunk's computer didn't play that special anthem it usually hums when he wakes it from its slumber. No. The great beast was silent.

So, loyal Dissent readers will have to put up with the likes of me, Rebel Girl, a gal who can put two words together (subject and verb) and call it a sentence but who isn't nearly as funny or all-encompassing as her editor-in-chief and pal-about-the-canyons, Chunk Wheeler.

In other words—don't expect to see anything of a graphic nature (that's graphic in terms of images, mind you) until Chunk returns.

It's a slow week at the little college in the orange groves.

My comp students are turning in their first formal essay assignments which means there are more available seats in class now than there were during that first week. The Red Cross Bloodmobile was looking for customers today and if I had felt better (but I didn't) I would have contributed my usual: a pint of O-positive. Someone left the A-200 xerox machine empty of paper without informing staff. The sad little tree by the newly opened new portables remains inexplicably wrapped with yellow caution tape.

Mostly though I am haunted by events of last week that Chunk alluded to in an earlier post: a student was expelled from campus due to his actions. I am somewhat close to these events and remain shaken and confused by many elements. This follows on the year anniversary of my chair-ship, which first immersed me in the world of student grievances (so many grievances, so little time!) and the sometimes related sphere of disturbed students (there's more out there than you imagine!).

While the grade grievance process is fairly straightforward, I have found myself puzzled and somewhat frightened by how vulnerable instructors (and staff and other students) are when dealing with a student who is obviously disturbed. Such a student presents, at times, a physical threat as well as a professional one.

What is to be done? How to preserve access for all students while still preserving and protecting those who teach? So they pull one student out of one instructor's class—but what about the next instructor who faces that student?

No answers here folks, just ruminations that keep me up late.


I found some wisdom about this subject elsewhere and would like to direct you to the blog Slaves of Academe and its posting of September 17, 2007 titled, "Scream." The recent shootings at Dawson College, blogger Oso Raro (that's Rare Bear for you non-Spanish speakers) notes, "underscore a number of unacknowledged facts about our lives as professors and teachers (as well as students): we can be targets for the rage and anger of others."

Oso Raro goes on to conclude:

"…we have all had encounters with students who are, ahem, in need of help. How I have dealt with them is to be very, very careful. The scrim of professsionalisation, maintaining distance between the student and myself has been a pretty effective tool, not to downplay my advocacy role for students, but to reinforce my position not as their friend, therapist, or probation officer, but as their professor. Even in the best of scenarios, however, we have moments of vulnerability. Last semester, I had a student who was a little edgy, smart but unstable in certain ways. One day, he arrived unannounced at my office to discuss his poor score on a question on the midterm, just as I was opening boxes. We sat down at my appointment table and he began to rant and get very emotional, while the pair of scissors that I had been using to open boxes were inches away from his hand. I maintained calm, but desperately wished there was an elegant way to reach across the table and snatch up the scissors and put them away. For a split second, I wondered if my colleagues down the hall would hear my screams when he plunged the scissors into me, he was so upset. The moment passed, and I have made it a rule to keep my scissors out of sight at all times subsequently, which is a pain when you actually have to open something.

But a very fine line of control was mildly crossed in that moment, and it made me think long and hard about the dangers we face, not only in the paranoid sense of crisis guides distributed by administrators concerned about lawsuits and scandals, but by the basic risks of the educational mind-meld we work every semester. I see no easy solution to these risks, for I believe in the mind-meld, the challenge of self-transformation, the trauma of education. The chilling fact that these processes may very rarely result in violence is not enough, in and of itself, to dissuade me from that mission. It is, however, enough to convince me to hide sharp implements in my office and always leave my office door open, and in some senses be wary of the very students I wish to reach through education. It may be depressing, it may be a symbol of our failing culture, it may be many things, but for me it is above all pragmatic. Shit happens, and I mean to survive. The big queen you see next on the telly crawling out a window with her hair askew and knickers on display for a national audience as her skirt rides up on the way down, will be me: ragged, shocked, a mess, but alive. When all else fails, when the mind meld goes awry, when your crisis guide was left at home, break off those heels and run for your life."

But, like I advise my students, you should read the whole thing. Really. The comments too. And then, we should talk—here, there, somewhere. Because the kind of issues laid out there are here. Really.

—Rebel Girl

P.S.: By the way, we'd love to hear from folks on this subject and others. It's easy to comment and you can—if you wish—remain anonymous. Give it the old college try.