eggshells.
Not long after Obama/Biden got into the White House, there were articles about how the Secret Service followed Jill Biden as she taught her college classes:After Secret Service arrived in suits and earpieces on her first day at Northern Virginia Community College, she suggested they dress less conspicuously. The next day they showed up looking like junior bankers on Casual Friday — khakis and ties. Biden again asked them to tone it down. Some of her students have only a vague awareness of her role as second lady. Asked once if she was related to the vice president, Biden responded efficiently, "Yes, we are related."
I've been interacting more with the police on campus lately. 'Nuff said.
Q. Have you had plain-clothes law-enforcement officers (not officers who are enrolled as students) in your classes while you've been teaching (due to threats or concerns)? How did you deal with it? Did you ask for them to be there? Did the student affairs staff work well with you on the matter?
That unexpected, disturbing story is, indeed, disturbing. I think the saddest part for me was to see the very clear disconnect between his own sense of whether his ideas were reaching anyone and his students', friends', and family's sense of how important his life and work were in their own lives. To repeat a truism that may have originally come from someone else, but that I associate with the bloggess, depression lies. And it's probably especially easy for it to lie to professors at this time of year, when even the most engaged students are looking glazed over, whatever inner enthusiasm and engagement they're feeling masked by exhaustion.
ReplyDeleteAs for the question, no, I've never had plain-clothes security in my classroom (thank goodness, there's never been a need). I've occasionally been in non-classroom spaces where government security people were present, and it does change the atmosphere (and no, they really can't be made inconspicuous, and I don't think they want to be -- if they did, they'd start by changing those oh-so-mid-20th-century earpieces for something that resembles a bluetooth headset. I'm also told that they have disguise people who are very good at their disposal -- but of course they use them when they deem the situation calls for it). Still, it's possible to adjust, and I assume Jill Biden's students did, presumably in part by following her lead, which seems to have emphasized that, inside her classroom, she was an English professor who was only incidentally the Vice President's wife.
But I think the situation it sounds like you're describing -- the sudden advent of security due to a threat on a specific person in the classroom, or perhaps the school more generally -- would be much more difficult to handle, especially in a smaller class. I suspect that many administrations might be more willing to provide the security than to provide an explanation to students of what's going on (perhaps partly for fear of liability/requests to withdraw or be transferred to another section). So then you're left with the unexpected, unexplained arrival of strangers -- perhaps a rotating cast of strangers -- in a classroom. That would be odd to say the very least, and certainly distracting. I know I always introduce my colleagues when they come to observe me, and explain to students that I, not they, am being observed. That's been the standard advice since long before every class came to have at least one student diagnosed with anxiety (and long before the rise of a generation that seems to have an unusually high number of members who haven't grown out of the once-childish perception that everything that happens around them is somehow aimed at them). So I'd think there would need to be an explanation. But I'd also think that any explanation would arouse even greater anxiety, and perhaps student and parental demands that whoever may be in danger -- and therefore might draw danger toward others in the classroom -- be removed.
It's a conundrum. And I very much hope the underlying situation is resolved, and soon. In the meantime, take good care.