Higher Education?

This is the sign that welcomes one to Oakland University in Rochester Hills, Michigan. As of fall of 2016, there were 20,012 students enrolled at Oakland University, putting it comfortably in as the 12th largest college or university in Michigan in terms of population. Yes, it's not Michigan or Michigan State, but Oakland University has some fairly well-known alumni such as Red Wings anthem singer Karen Newman, four-time table tennis Olympian and 1988 Olympic bronze medalist Jasna Rather, and India's 11th President Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam who served from 2002 until 2007. Not a bad list of dignitaries there!

If you're wondering why I'm talking about an NCAA school without a hockey program, it's because they went off and did something rather astounding with respect to how they handle one of America's worst problems right now. I don't even have the words to begin to describe my level of disbelief about this, so I'll let the NPR headline describe it for you.

Yes, that's real. Yes, that's really happening at Oakland University. No, I'm not sure how anyone came up with the idea that this was a smart, safe, and effective way of protecting students from a shooter on campus, but someone in their infinite wisdom must have been reading BroBible and thought, "If hockey pucks stop bullets, we should have kids use them as shields!"

As facetious as I'm being, here is the NPR article for you to read. In it, it seems the idea for this hockey puck strategy took root when a participant asked Oakland University Police Chief Mark Gordon a rather simple question.

A participant at the training asked Oakland University Police Chief Mark Gordon what items people could use to defend themselves on the campus, which has a no-weapons policy, the Detroit Free Press reports.

A hockey puck was a "spur-of-the-moment idea that seemed to have some merit to it, and it kind of caught on," Gordon said.

The faculty union followed up on the idea, purchasing 2,500 hockey pucks: 800 for union members and 1,700 for students, the Free Press reports.

That sound you just heard was my jaw hitting the desk at which I'm seated. For a police chief to suggest something like a hockey puck being used for defence in any situation involving bullets is about as irresponsible as one can get as a police officer of any merit. And while the university "conducts active-shooter training sessions multiple times a year" where students are taught "the 'run, hide, fight' method, which emphasizes fleeing an active-shooter situation above all else, hiding if fleeing isn't an option — and fighting if hiding isn't," the fact that you're asking a student to dig around in one's backpack for a puck that one can use as a projectile while bullets, panic, and fear are taking hold of everyone is about as ignorant to the bigger problem as one can get.

Perhaps the university should really look at someone who is potentially making this entire situation worse.

"If you threw [a hockey puck] at a gunman, it would probably cause some injury. It would be a distraction, if nothing else," Gordon told WXYZ, a local ABC station.

The police chief also suggested that a group of students could "rush" an active shooter with their pucks, creating a distraction that would allow someone else to get their hands on the shooter's weapon.

Oakland University, you really need to take a long, hard look at the man you have sitting in the Chief of Police chair at your school. This man is endangering students and faculty with his stupidity. Thankfully, the students attending Oakland University seem to be a lot smarter than the man running the university's police force.

"If I was to give you a puck, and I had a gun, would I be able to take you out?" senior Jacob Gora told WXYZ with a laugh. "Easily, yeah. I mean, a puck is not going to distract me or stop me from shooting someone."

"I find it, at first, absurd," echoed student Adam Kalajian. "If there's an armed person coming in, why would you chuck a puck at them?"

Perhaps these two young men should be advising Police Chief Gordon on better ways to protect students because they seem to have the intelligence to know that a hockey puck will do little, if anything, in a crisis like having a shooter on campus. It's unfathomable that the faculty union would even consider Chief Gordon's remarks about the hockey pucks being sound and reasonable, let alone going out and purchasing 2500 pucks for distribution. It's unfathomable that all of this is happening and that people at an institution of higher learning think this is a reasonable way to protect one's self at all.

Oakland University was ranked as the third-safest campus in the nation in 2017. The school is already doing good things in protecting its students from harm while attending classes and events on the school grounds. They don't need hockey pucks to continue that strong legacy of safety. As the NPR article states, "Oakland University's student newspaper, The Oakland Post, wrote in March that the school has locks 'on the outside, not the inside' of classrooms." Having locks that can be controlled from the inside of the rooms would be infinitely better than handing out hockey pucks to 10% of the faculty and students. This is something towards which the faculty union - who donated $5000 towards this cause - should have put the $2350 they spent on pucks.

I'm still in shock over this development at Oakland University. I'm not here to lecture anyone on the US's love of guns and the gun culture they've developed. As a society, they need to figure that one out on their own if they hope to find serious resolution to the number of people killed by guns each year. The numbers don't lie, and the worst part is that the number of young people killed each year by guns is staggering. As a civilized nation who prides itself on being a leader on many front, this is one of those issues that just keeps them from rising higher.

In saying that, I do know that hockey pucks will be ineffective in a shooting. It's a large reason why the military doesn't carry pucks with them into war zones. It's why you never see police officers pulling pucks out of their pockets during armed confrontations. This hockey puck strategy will be largely ineffective on a number of fronts if there ever was to be a shooting at Oakland University, and my hope is that students and faculty just forget the "fight" part in the "run, hide, fight" training sessions.

On the other hand, let's just hope that the nation's third-safest university remains that way.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!