While the shooting of an assistant professor at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, shook higher education leaders across the nation, the tragedy hit Roger Hadfield Ogden Honors College Dean Jonathan Earle closer to home.
Shannon Lamb, an instructor at Delta State suspected of killing a woman he lived with and assistant professor Ethan Schmidt, committed suicide following a police chase, FOX News reported.
A former teacher, adviser and friend to Schmidt, Earle penned a special to The Clarion-Ledger “to work through some of the feelings” he had following the news.
“I’m a dean now, so I kind of administer faculty and students, and he is just exactly what you want on your college campus,” Earle said of Schmidt. “He was a great citizen and a great teacher and a great scholar.”
Earle mentored Schmidt at the University of Kansas, where he worked before LSU. Schmidt was a teacher’s assistant for one of Earle’s large lecture classes, and Earle sat on Schmidt’s dissertation committee.
“He really thought deeply what it was to be a professor of history and a professor in the humanities, and we rarely hear that these days,” Earle said.
The University of Kansas, where Earle and Schmidt came to know each other, is in the process of gaining a state exemption to allow guns on campus, Earle said. The process should be completed by 2017.
But for Earle, this latest incident involving gun violence solidifies his view that a university is no place forweapons.
“I think that people assume that campuses are safe and bucolic places, and we all know that it doesn’t take much to make them into places of terror and violence,” Earle said. “You can squarely put me on the side of, ‘I think it is a terrible idea.’ There are a lot of places [where] guns are fine and good, but college campuses aren’t one of them for me.”
Accounting sophomore Christopher Focke said little could be done to police “a few psychos” on a campus of 30,000 people.
Focke said he is adamantly against any type of gun control and thinks professors should be allowed to carry.
“With gun control, you are taking away guns from people who abide by the law,” Focke said. “[Criminals] are outlaws for a reason, so they are going to get guns legally or illegally.”
Kinesiology sophomore Summer Moore said she also feels safe on campus “for the most part,” but recognizes the dangers in being naively trusting of those around her.
“You always have to be aware of your surrounding. The simple fact is that the world isn’t safe anymore,” Moore said. “You used to be able to leave your door unlocked, but now you can’t because you can’t even trust your neighbors.”
LSUPD continually prepares for emergency situations on campus, according to a statement from LSU Police Chief Lawrence Rabalais, though there is no information of any specific threats to the LSU community.
“Each time we see an incident occur anywhere, there are lessons that can be learned,” Rabalais said in the statement. “We use the information to evaluate our training protocols in an effort to see if there is anything that we can improve upon.”
Rabalais pointed to the C.A.R.E team, a multi-departmental approach to identifying those experiencing crisis, as a way LSUPD works with departments on campus to mitigate dangerous situations.
Rabalais said the safety videos on the LSUPD website can help students prepare for emergencies and identify the warning signs of violent acts.
“We always urge the community we serve to be vigilant as well and report anything of concern to us,” Rabalais said.