Out of North Carolina comes this example of extreme stupidity:
ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. — Elizabeth City State University is offering counseling to faculty and students after some became unknowing participants in an emergency response drill.
The News & Observer of Raleigh reported in Wednesday’s editions that an armed man burst into a classroom Friday, threatening to kill students. The drill came eight days after a gunman killed five people and himself in a classroom at Northern Illinois University.
Anthony Brown, vice chancellor of student affairs, said ECSU was testing its response to such shootings. E-mail and text messages were sent five days before the drill, notifying students, staff and faculty, he said.
“The intent was not to frighten them but to test our system and also to test the response of the security that was on campus and the people that were notified,” Brown said.
But not everyone got the word, including assistant professor Jingbin Wang, whose American foreign policy class was held hostage.
“I was prepared to die at that moment,” Wang said Tuesday of the moment the gunman entered the room.
The “gunman” was in fact a campus police officer, but the prof and students didn’t know that:
The seven students were lined up against the wall, and the intruder threatened to kill the one with the lowest grade point average. Wang said the man told them that he had been kicked out of school and that he needed a lung transplant.
First, I’d like to know just what the hell the hair-brained administrator who came up with this “drill” was thinking. Oh, never mind, they weren’t thinking. Fucking Moron doesn’t begin to describe this person.
Second, I’d like to point out that waving a gun around and threatening to kill people — even if it’s “just a drill” and a “toy gun” — is a good way to get shot by a law-abiding gun-owner, as North Carolina is a shall-issue state. It’s also a good way to get tackled, cut, bludgeoned, or tasered.
And lastly, I’ll just say: Unleash the Lawyers. It’s inevitable that the school will get sued, and quite rightly, for this little stunt.
Update: Instapundit agrees with me: “The guy’s lucky that nobody shot him, or cold-cocked him. Which would have been an appropriate response to what seemed to be going on.”
Update Mar 7, 2008: This is an interesting point: a mouse that Brenda found in her garage showed more bravery than any of these students:
Not one of the students fought back. Not one thought to pick up a chair or a desk, or even a book, to defend themselves. They all lined up against a wall and passively waited for death.
One of the students said, “I was prepared to die at that moment.” Several students say they considered leaping from a window.
My mouse had more courage than this. Against insurmountable odds, it growled at me and prepared to fight, even to its death. The college students who meekly bared their throats to those who wanted to rip them out are dead already - they just don’t know it.
I would think that people would know better by now. When a gunman bursts into a classroom, they’re there for only one purpose: to commit a massacre. They aren’t there to steal books or wallets; they’re there to kill everyone in the room. I’d also think that people would know that fighting back is the only way to save their lives against a murderer. Alas, many people tend to disappoint me.
I’m unusual in that I’m a technology guy who prefers a cell phone that is simply a phone without a lot of bells and whistles. For this reason, I continued carrying my trusty Audiovox 9100 phone for six years. Yes, I carried the same cell phone for six years.