Valentine’s Day left the American public with a sour aftertaste. A young man unleashed chaos in the campus of Northern Illinois University, bursting into rage and changing his campus forever.
While security measures and emergency systems can give us a perceived sense of safety on campus, there is a deeper male crisis to deal with, and we young male collegians should deal with it openly.
Douglas Kellner, cultural critic and UCLA professor of education, blames the recurring incidents on the cult of testosterone, guns and war. His latest book, “Guys and Guns Amok: Domestic Terrorism and School Shootings from the Oklahoma City Bombing to the Virginia Tech Massacre” provides an in-depth analysis of the ongoing cycle of young men erupting into campus-based killing sprees.
“School shooters and domestic terrorists exhibit male rage, attempt to resolve a crisis of masculinity through violent behavior, and demonstrate a violence for guns or weapons,” he said in a UCLA press release.
That crisis of hyper-masculinity has persisted for years, and often manifests itself in the form of school shootings. I remember watching the coverage of the 1999 Columbine shooting from abroad. Last year, the country was shaken and President Bush himself flew down to grieve with the Virginia Tech community.
This time, the Valentine’s Day episode witnessed a smaller response. It seems that, with each occurrence, the impact is smaller. And the fact remains that young men still have not taken a stance against violence.
“View men not only as perpetrators or possible offenders, but as empowered bystanders who can confront abusive peers,” reads the first page of “10 Things Men Can Do to Prevent Gender Violence,” a pamphlet by the Mentors in Violence Prevention Program, an organization dedicated to preventing male rage and violence.
But usually we are traumatized, rather than empowered, bystanders and our involvement is simply a reaction.
Last year, the UCLA community responded to the massacre at Virginia Tech with a massive rally in the De Neve quad, a major overhaul of the emergency response system and eventual remembrance projects by two of this year’s USAC offices.
With this latest episode, there was little campus upheaval. But can we really blame ourselves about our newfound apathy?
In many ways, it seems natural. The continuous occurrence of similar incidents makes the issue almost obsolete.
For our 21st-century attention span, the shootings are simply too much. I, for one, quickly breezed through the report on CNN, and moved to see what issue John McCain had flip-flopped on that day.
It’s easy to look away, especially for the average college guy, during this time of the year. We can stop thinking about how single we were on Valentine’s Day, and look forward to how drunk we will be on St. Patrick’s Day ““ our next stop in the consumption calendar.
In his book, Kellner recommends not only better guidance and mental health, but also the projection of more constructive images of masculinity. Jackson Katz, the founder of MVP, agrees: “(It is) not some sort of genetic abnormality in men; it is our culture; it is learned behavior,” he said in a Powell River Peak interview.
Unlearning that behavior is key to promoting a healthier campus environment, both to prevent mass-scale tragedies and individual abuse.
The culture of “boys will be boys” has been challenged, but it takes more than school efforts to change this current.
The university has done part of the work by enhancing its emergency response system, and approximately 11,700 students have signed up to receive text message alerts in case of a fire, an earthquake or a shooting.
But we can also assume that 11,700 students do not need a text message to know there is an earthquake. Our concern lies in eruptions of violence, particularly from young men, and it makes sense.
“School shootings and other acts of mass violence embody a crisis of out-of-control gun culture and male rage, heightened by a glorification of hyper-masculinity and violence in the media,” Kellner said.
But in order to correct this trend, it has to be guys rolling up their sleeves.
There is much we can do to prevent men’s violence on all levels, if we find the collective will among men to make it a priority.
School shootings stand seemingly isolated. Guys that suddenly lost it. Kids that “didn’t fit the profile.” But brushing these incidents aside as individual problems will not prevent the next incident ““ or change the way young guys see themselves.
Boys will be boys, but as we live and coexist on campus, all boys must strive to be better men.
E-mail Ramos at mramos@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.