Paranoia ✓

VII: Salvador - Shelter in Place

Sorry, but I have to break into the flow of the paper to give an update of what happened at my university over the past couple of days. It's a great example of the paranoia that's going about, with relation to terrorism.

At approximately 1:13 A.M. on Monday night, I was on Amazon Instant Video watching one of my shows when I received an email notification with the subject line: Rave Alert: Shelter in Place. I was surprised that I got a university email delivered to my private email account instead of my school email account, and I clicked on it. I read the email and found out that the school was on lockdown after a janitor spotted a man who looked to be carrying a weapon while asking for directions to the administrative building. But what I just gave you were details that were found out days later. In reality the email just said there was an armed suspect on campus and that everyone must "shelter in place" until further notice. It wasn't until about an hour and a half later at approximately 2:48 A.M. that the shelter in place was lifted.

That incident wasn't, to me, as much of a big deal, considering most people were either at home, off campus, or in their dorms on campus. It happened on a Monday night, so I doubt people were having parties at 1 A.M. on a Monday night—especially a Monday night the week before finals week.

We received more details at 4:20 A.M. An email from the office of the president notified us that at 10:31 P.M. the Department of Public Safety was notified that a custodial worker near one of the buildings at the edge of campus was approached by a "suspect with a weapon."

What was the weapon? This pencil, which I hold right now, can be a weapon. So can a bat or a guitar or anything. Words can be used as weapons against the mind and spirit. It wasn't clarified until a future email that the weapon the janitor thought he saw was a handgun.

Anyway, the janitor began to describe the appearance of the suspect to DPS. Now here comes the fun part. Usually, African Americans commit most gun violence in this area of D.C. It's sad to say, but most people expected the description of the suspect to match one of them. Over 99% of email notifications about on and off-campus crimes involve an African American suspect. In fact, I've never heard of a crime around my university that did not involve an African American suspect.

Except this one—but this one wasn't really a crime—it was more of a false alarm.

The suspect was described as a Middle Eastern male, within the age range of 19-20 years old, slim build, approximately six feet tall, wearing a black sports coat.

Did somebody say Middle Eastern?

At the mere utterance of a Middle Eastern suspect, guess what the police department of D.C. (MPD) called in? That's right—the Explosive Ordinance Unit! The EOU searched many of the buildings on campus for any signs of explosives and (not to my surprise) found none.

There are many flaws to this entire event that shows how ill prepared and ill mannered my university is, and probably even other universities too had this happened to them. For starters, the possible "altercation" between the janitor and the suspect occurred at 10:31 P.M. Yet students were not notified until over three hours later at 1:13 A.M. If there actually was a dangerous shooter on campus, we would've had to rely on the sound of the gunshots in order to realize that something bad was happening.

Secondly, it was 10:31 P.M. and our campus isn't exactly lit up correctly. The janitor thought he saw a handgun, but what if it was a phone case strapped to the man's belt? And, even if he was carrying a gun, isn't this what the gun nuts want? Don't they want everyone carrying handguns with them? Second Amendment right—right?

But no, it's only okay if a white person carries a handgun around, not a Muslim, or an Hispanic, and God forbid any more "black people" get a hold on them. This is ridiculous. The hypocrisy is livid amongst party politics.