ACPA Statement on Mass Murder

All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished.  ~Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

1 October 2015 - On this date, 26-year old Christopher Harper Mercer entered the “gun free zone” of Umpqua Community College and murdered nine people, wounded nine individuals and terrorized thousands more.

ACPA President Gavin Henning said:

These senseless acts of violence at our institutions of higher education are distressing.  When one campus is affected, all campuses are affected. The family and friends of the shooting victims at Umpqua Community College and the entire college community are in our thoughts and prayers.

There has never been a better time for all of us to work together on understanding the roots of violence and to systemically address them in society and on our campuses.  Thank you for joining with us as we remember the lost, support the grieving and pledge our best efforts to eliminating violence on campuses.

Mercer’s connection to Umpqua Community College is unclear.  He was not a student.  Some reports indicate that he asked people to “stand up” before asking them to say if they were Christian or not.  If they identified as Christian, they were shot in the head.  If they identified as “other” they were shot in other parts of their bodies. 

Some reports indicate that he identified as gay.  One commentator suggested he was part of the Irish Republican Army. We will never really know what motivated him to destroy other human beings or create circumstances in which he would surely die.

But, we do know that he had access to guns and he used them to take human life on a college campus.   In the past, we have joined with our peer associations to express our official position on guns on campus and invite you to review our recommendations that campuses operate “gun free” facilities.

Because preventing campus homicide and gun violence is an enormous, complex, and critical responsibility placed upon our collective shoulders, sharing knowledge with the higher education community that will build upon our knowledge and understanding is essential… Kevin Kruger, President, NASPA and Cynthia Love, Executive Director, ACPA (from College in the Crosshairs: An Administrative Perspective on Prevention of Gun Violence)

While the majority of mass shootings on college campuses have occurred between 1990-2015, there is a palpable trajectory of murders on college campuses since 1909 that bears witness to the deep challenge of “defending” students and other community members from violence when it emerges.

From a threat assessment perspective, it is important to know 30 percent of the subjects from 1909 to 2014 were either unaffiliated or indirectly affiliated with the college or university.  Three-quarters of the indirectly affiliated were current or former spouses or intimate partners.  Bottom line, campus and law enforcement personnel must design threat assessment capabilities that extend beyond their campus borders.

By establishing connections to community resources ahead of time, campus safety professionals may enhance their ability to prevent a threat from materializing that originated from an indirectly affiliated subject.  And sometimes even this best effort will not stop violence.

We paused on the day of this most recent tragedy to remember the lost. When a mass shooting happens on a campus, we stop for a time to reflect and grieve because our best efforts did not prevent tragedy. We remember the families and people of Umpqua Community College and today, we press forward even harder in our relentless work to address the root causes of violence and eradicate them.

I started this blog with the quote from Rosenberg because I believe that there are two powerful interventions we can offer as citizens and professionals in student affairs.  We can reject “guns on campus” (the locus of our control) and we can persist in our work to eliminate stigma in our society. 

People who believe that their pain derives from other people sometimes choose to punish those whom they believe have hurt them.  Stigma disconnects us from one another, isolates us and evokes our deepest fears of being cast out, mocked, hurt or violently erased.

In our country, we make it easy for those who feel stigmatized, disconnected and isolated to buy the tools of destruction with which they wreak their vengeance. 

Thankfully, the people who choose to buy them are a small percentage of all human beings who believe they must balance the scales of perceived injustices.  At the end of this article, I provide the stories of that small percentage of active shooters from 1909 to present.  I think it catalyzes our efforts in prevention to remember the past.

For many years, members of ACPA have provided leading research regarding violence on campuses and best practices for prevention and threat assessment.  We have partnered with our peer associations and scholar practitioners to produce resources for campuses and remained steadfast in our shared work to provide practitioners with the knowledge and skills necessary to establish and maintain safe campus environments that are proactive against the threat of devastating violence (read our statement here).

Prevention of campus violence includes a range of complementary and collaborative strategies involving advocacy for public policy, institutional services, and personal commitment (citation). Contributors to this work develop strategies to enhance prevention and mitigate risk, implement emergency planning and preparation, respond to critical incidents, and help communities recover.

Community colleges have not been involved in the majority of active shooter cases tracked by the FBI over the last 91 years, however, forecasts suggest that now they will be more likely to deal with violence because more students are entering their campuses than any time in history and there are more guns available than any time in our history.

Over the last 14 months, ACPA has invested deeply in its partnerships with community college researchers and practitioners.  This is not new work for us, but it has not been at the center of our activities over the last 91 years. 

Our Commission on Two Year Colleges and our new partnership with the National Council on Student Development (NCSD) create fertile ground for thought leadership, research and scholarship. 

We must mobilize all of higher education to understand and address the real threats that are part of our lives and to ensure best practices for all institutions.

One irony about campus threat response teams is that the types of campuses most in need of them are the ones for which it can be most difficult to create and manage them.

Student affairs personnel in these settings may need to be particularly creative in finding resources in the college and outlying community to help support team functions.  And we are here to support them.  Thank you for supporting us.

Acts of Violence on Campuses

April 29, 1909-October 1, 2015 (source)

April 29, 1909
On this date, a subject, who was not affiliated with the affected college fatally, shot his former girlfriend, a student, on her college campus. He then killed himself. The target had reportedly refused the subject’s marriage proposals. He had come to the college two to three days earlier to persuade the target to change her mind.

August 1, 1966
A 25-year-old student and former marine seized an observation tower on the University of Texas (Austin) campus, killing and/or injuring several people on his way up the tower, then randomly fired a rifle at passersby for approximately 96 minutes. He was eventually shot by police. In the aftermath, 13 people were killed and 31 were wounded on the campus. The evening before the incident, the subject typed a final letter of explanation detailing his thoughts. He then went to his mother’s home, choking and fatally stabbing her shortly after midnight. After writing another letter, which he left there, he returned home and fatally stabbed his wife as she slept. Penning notes to other family members, he prepared for his attack later that day.

Winter 1991-1992
Beginning in December 1991, a 35-year-old former student, who had graduated 6 years prior, carried out two sniper-style attacks on his old campus. On December 12, 1991, the subject fatally shot a janitor in an auditorium. Then on January 29, 1992, he shot and wounded a female graduate student as she waited in a building for her husband. It was during a third similar incident that police killed the subject. On February 10, 1992, the subject was shooting at a student housing complex near the campus. After a foot pursuit, police killed the subject. Though he had been rejected from the graduate program four years prior, the motive for the attacks was not clear.

December 14, 1992
An 18-year-old student killed one professor, one student, and wounded four others in a random sweep across campus. The subject first approached a security-guard shack on the campus and shot the guard inside. Critically wounding him, he then fatally shot a professor, who was driving past. From there, he walked to the library where he fatally shot a student. He then entered a dormitory and resumed firing. He surrendered to police after his rifle jammed and he called 911, informing them that he was the shooter. Reportedly, the subject held views that were perceived as racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic by fellow students and was not adjusting well to the campus environment.

October 28, 2002
A 41-year-old student entered a college building shortly before 8:30 a.m., looking for three instructors. The subject fatally shot the first in her 2nd-floor office. He then fatally shot the second in a 4th-floor classroom in front of approximately 20 students, walked to the back of the classroom and shot his final victim. Soon after, he released the students and shot himself. The subject had been failing and had mailed a 22-page letter and other documents to a local media outlet. In his letter, he sketched his failed marriage, poor health, and the slights he perceived from the nursing school he claimed treated male students as “tokens.”

Thank you to the many ACPA scholars and our colleagues who contributed to the information provided in this column.