Purdue University shooter (courtesy purduereview.com)

“A surreal scene unfolded around noon on Tuesday,” purduereview.com reports. “As a gunman shot an instructor at point-blank range in front of a classroom of students, some Purdue professors continued to teach class as if nothing was amiss, ignoring students’ pleas to lock the doors and turn off the lights. ‘I’ll have the TA tackle him if he comes in,’ joked Professor Rebecca Trax, according to Sami Menard, a student in her 12:00 Introduction to Accounting class. Trax may very well have been describing the scene that unfolded in the Electrical Engineering building, where a TA was killed.” And if you think that was bad (and it was) check this out . . .

Professor Trax was not the only faculty member who disregarded the danger. Student Claire Gordon said that Miyoung Hong, an instructor in the College of Liberal arts, insisted that there were no threats, and propped open a door after another instructor had closed it.

Student Bryce Shaffer told The Purdue Review that Professor Alon Kantor cracked jokes. “[He] told us we’re being typical Americans and hysterical for asking him to lock doors, and [continued] lecturing.”

Students also reported that many other professors and instructors made no adjustments. The indifference was not unique to one department or building. Professors teaching in the Physics, University, and Armstrong buildings paid no heed to the warnings. Many students felt unsafe and wanted to leave, but felt they could not because of the shelter-in-place protocol.

I’m sorry, but this is the sheep leading the sheep. You expect Ivory Tower professors to live in a permanent state of denial about the reality of violence. [NB: Ivory Tower professors are a sub-group of all academics. There are plenty of educators who know the score when it comes to self-defense.] But you’d hope that some of their charges would know enough to get the hell out of Dodge when they see text alerts on their phone indicating that an active shooter’s on campus. Or at least lock the doors and hide.

Hang on! I’ve got an idea! Someone with a gun could close the doors, pull the shades, put the kids behind cover or concealment, aim their weapon at the door and wait for whatever comes – or doesn’t come – next. Sounds crazy but it just might work! Wait! It does! [Click here for the truth about protecting students from active shooters.]

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93 COMMENTS

  1. Heh, this was almost going to be “Your Lockdown of the Day™ that wasn’t really a Lockdown…”

    The comments section is running strongly in the “I don’t care what the professor said, I’d have locked the door myself” direction. So the students are not incapable of thinking for themselves quite yet, it seems.

    • Lock the door my ass. Check the hallway. Listen for trouble. Leave. Run. Hide. Skidaddle. Go.

      • Fair enough. I just meant that at least they were going to do something.

        Which makes me wonder… If you got a text that an active shooter was on campus, and you locked/barricaded the door and then press-checked your weapon and reholstered, how do you think that would go over?

        • Assuming you’re carrying in violation of school or state policy , the ROE I’d use is if it’s clear a threat has an actual firearm and is or will use it to end someone’s life.Meaning an actual bad guy in front of you with a smoking firearm.

          Otherwise, if you clear holster because some yahoo dropped some firecrackers to dodge a Calc midterm, you’re gonna be in a heap o trouble.

          • It was just a theoretical question.

            What’s your deal, anyway? I looked back through your comment history and upwards of 80% of your comments are obnoxious shots at other commenters. Do you have some pent up anger you’re trying to work through? Of course, I’m only referring to the comments you leave under the name of Larry. The comments you leave under other names are generally fairly normal. How many sockpuppet names do you comment under here, anyway? I counted at least four.

            • Oh, I forgot. What I really don’t understand is I’ve had worthwhile interactions with some of your other aliases, but under this one, you call me a leftist and call William Burke a liberal. So are you trolling, or do you really hold dramatically different viewpoints under different names? Are you/should you be medicated?

        • Fly, you fools!

          Followed when (if) the bad guy arrives by YOU…SHALL NOT…PASS!!!

          And some badass weaponry to enforce your edict wouldn’t hurt. Gandalf knew better than to roam Middle Earth unarmed.

        • …but Gandalf was still apparently too stupid to just have Gwaihir the great eagle just take the ring, fly it to Mordor and drop it right into Mt. Doom. Seriously, it should be a 20 page book.

        • You forget about the winged Nazgul. Gwaihir wouldn’t have made it to Orodruin (Mt. Doom) because the Ring Wraiths had since taken to the air on flying steeds and continuously guarded the mountain of fire by air from Minas Morgul. But everyone knows that…..

      • There’s usually a lot of exposed ground to cover between academic buildings and parking lots. Depending on the situation, being out in the open might be an equally bad idea. Perhaps shelter somewhere more defensible/less obvious than a classroom.

    • I’m a vet (just to clarify that I am not a whiny 18 year old who thinks that the world starts and ends with our professors) and I chewed a professor’s ass out today (a little in front of the class, then more privately after class) for something not near as bad as mishandling an active shooter situation. I would have ZERO problem taking the lead on correcting any Prof’s failure to respond accordingly if that were the case.

      I do wish it were legal for me to carry at school though, God forbid, I would be properly prepared to defend myself and others.

      • When I was in the ‘Corps, the phrase “It’s better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission” was bantered about quite a bit.

        • That’s my motto. In this case, I had the rules on my side and he wouldn’t budge. Schools, like most entities, have a standards and expectations written down for teachers and students. I reread every semester. The trump card is when you beat them at their own rules.

    • Hindsight and bravado are 20/20 after any incidents like this one. What they will really do is another thing. Those professor due hold a position of authority. If your a freshman you are probably going to listen to the professor, if your a senior provided you are not brain washed, you may act differently.

      Hopefully the school will give the professors more than a slap on the wrist and make a policy such that if students feel unsafe they can make their own choice without getting in trouble from some “know-it-all” professor.

  2. I’m so sick of hearing about shooting in schools. This wouldn’t happen, if only schools respected our constitutionally protected right to self defense.

  3. I’m a current veteran student, and I approve this article.

    Seriously, the universities would save millions if they just didn’t bother trying to run their staff through crisis training .These hidebound professors have spent decades believeing all human beings live as they do, and as such teaching them “self defense” is like teaching a baby seal how to rationalize a radical function.

    It’s quite sad, yet a proven fact that a human mind conditioned to believe a certain thing will simply ignore any evidence which questions that belief, no matter how overwhelming it is.Don’t even get me started on foreign teachers and TAs. You’re insane if you think a French teacher born and raised in Marseilles will take a security threat seriously.

    Let the professors live in Ivory Towerland, and let the students bring the weapons they need to be prepared for Real Life.

    • Nail on the head, buddy. I am in the same boat.

      “Don’t even get me started on foreign teachers and TAs” – Read my post above, the teach that I “corrected” was from Spain or some jerkoff place. As I was trying to explain to him how very wrong he was on his actions, he just would mumble and wouldn’t change course. Luckily my issue was finally solved by “escorting” him to his boss.

  4. It’s almost like these professors were so smug and self assured that they ignored common sense and told their students ridiculous things that made no sense to reinforce their own delusions about the world. Or, college.

    • It’s almost like these professors were so smug and self assured that they ignored common sense and told their students ridiculous things that made no sense to reinforce their own delusions about the world. Or, college.

      There … fixed that for you.

  5. If I didn’t have my tinfoil hat on, I’d say this was some dark conspiracy — the faculty in league with the mad shooter, who like an angry Babylonian god demands more young blood. I mean, propping open doors?!

    That was a lesson for these kids, but not the one the profs intended.

  6. To be fair, their have been so many lock downs due to an over reaction that it’s very easy to stop believing them. On this site they highlight a lockdown a day pretty much. It’s the whole boy who cried wolf thing.

  7. The nice thing about backpacks is that you can easily conceal a full sized + ammo. And carrying on a college campus is not illegal in Virginia. They can kick your ass out, but that’s the extent of it. (They’ve already given me the fancy paper so i kinda flaunt it now.) I also know that i wasn’t the only armed citizen floating around.

  8. Being in Indiana this has been all over between friends and colleagues at work. One of the vendors’ daughter was supposedly dating the TA that was shot. I keep posing the question to EVERYONE who won’t stop bringing it up, “If this didn’t happen on school grounds would you know about it?” Yes you went/are going to Purdue. Congrats. But how many people in your home town, or even your neighborhood have been murdered and not made news to this degree. Do you feel as outraged by any of these people or is it just because it’s in the media right now?
    Yes I’m tired of these events getting such wide spread attention. Tired of the “hide in place” policy. Where I work we had our active shooter email go out…and we were told NO ONE is allowed to contact outside the building or risk reprimand. Hide in place, contact the aging security…and let admin decide when and if to involve the police…..I feel safer already

    • Your description illustrates that your employer’s only concern is the business, not the employees.

      Oooh, they will reprimand you if you leave during a “workplace violence” event. So be it. At least you will be alive and well. No job is worth your life — especially when the business doesn’t give a flying #$%@ what happens to its employees.

  9. Another reason to go to college online. I swore after junior college, that never again would I have some a$$hole-self important-egomaniac dictate to me from the mount. Online college is a just the basics teaching, a few online chats of classroom discussion, and NO GROUP projects. (Which means 3 out of 7 do the work and the rest ride on their coat tails). The liberal marxists in this country have ruined education from pre-K on up.

  10. “You expect Ivory Tower professors to live in a permanent state of denial about real world reality. That’s who they are and what they do.”

    Please pump the brakes Robert. I teach at a University and the faculty I know are certainly not in denial and they are not sheep. There are stupid people in all professions.

    • Biofire,

      Then your faculty are the exception, not the rule. That is why academia universally shuns firearms.

      • Um … No we don’t, not universally. I know some faculty members at the US Naval Academy, Naval Postgraduate School, Colorado State University, Stanford, U. Maryland and a few other places who enjoy a good day out on the range.

        Then again, most of those people are in either physics or one of the engineering departments. Oh, and an odd chemist or two. (But I repeat myself…)

    • I don’t know anything about your school, of course. However, one common finding throughout most of the larger active shooter events is that some of the people who died did so because they didn’t/couldn’t believe that an attack was really happening. So they waited too long to react. Typical initial thoughts are that the shots were construction noise or a heavy truck passing by or a car backfiring (what cars even do that in this century?)

      Do you really think that the faculty at your school would act remarkably different from those of the many others who’ve experienced one of these events? Wouldn’t that mindset reflect a state of seclusion from the world and separation from its practicalities that marks the very definition of “ivory tower”?

    • That was Virginia. Could never happen in Indiana.

      Sorry, I was hoping that would make sense if I saw it written out just one more time….nope. Still doesn’t.

    • Most students would be afraid to leave.Prof might even fail them if they walk out.

      Shameful how no one learns from past school shootings.

      • I think I would rather fail my class, then have the prof FIRED for disobeying protocal. I would rather fail a class then be killed because my F-up prof decided not to take serious threats seriously…. I mean, SERIOUSLY!!

  13. As a college student, I think my first thought in a school shooting would be “one time I don’t have my Beretta…”

  15. If the seat belts in the cars they drive didn’t work, or if the airbags in their cars didn’t deploy in an accident, or if their fire extinguishers didn’t work properly, or if an AED machine failed to provide life-saving electrical shock at the critical moment, then there would hell to pay.

    It doesn’t occur to those people that one of those safeguards will fail at the critical moment. They’re expected to be there, and to work.

    But tell them that the best safeguard against an active shooter is arming themselves and/or their students, and you’ll receive the howling from parents and politicians about “We don’t want **GUNS** in our schools…!!!!”

    • People like to believe that they can “wish” away those evil guns and when one of those evil people shoots one of those evil guns, it’s proof that their anti-gun policies work (in their minds). Except, all it does is of course disarm the majority, law-abiding citizen and enables the bad guys.

    • Indeed. You might as well lobby to remove the AED machines to stop people from having heart attacks. Same logical fallacy, just switch the subjects.

    • The good folks at Virginia Tech didn’t want guns on campus either, but they got them.

      • Not just Virginia Tech…Columbine High Schoool…Cinemark Century 16 Cineplex…Sandy Hook Elementary… Louisiana Technical College… Kirkwood, Missouri city hall… Portsmouth, Ohio’s Notre Dame Elementary School…Arapahoe High School…

        I’m getting tired of typing…

  16. As a current student and teacher who spends 8-10 hours a day M-F on college campuses, I can say with utmost certainty that many teachers dont take “shelter in place” seriously. Our new “security feature” for this year is a class phone for every class programmed to automatically dial campus police if the handset is removed from the base for more than 10 sec with no activity, and also preset stand alone buttons for campus police and city police. I wish the Georgia State Congress would get their heads out of their collective A$$es and pass our campus carry bill, which is currently held up in the Senate the last time I checked. I know of at least 6-7 teachers/TAs in my department that have CWPs and would probably carry on campus if legal in GA, regardless of “university policy”.

  17. Here’s something to consider: the students smart enough to GTFO didn’t stick around to discuss it ad nauseam with their classmates or give a statement to the press. They likely exited with speed and purpose and then followed the action via Internet updates from behind a locked apartment door, or in a coffeehouse well off campus.

  18. And many hundreds of people in the towers during 9/11 didn’t evacuate the buildings even after the second plane hit. So what? It a basic psychological response to crisis that some people can’t see what’s right before them, and if they don’t freeze into inaction dismiss the danger, it has nothing to do with “ivory tower” professors or a liberal agenda in the classroom.

  19. We are going to have an active shooter drill at my job some time. One of my fellow workers stated he would stay in the classroom. I said I am going to GTFO. He said it was stupid to try to leave. I said it was stupid to die in place. Staying all huddled in a room makes a target rich environment. The shooter can just walk up and pick you off one by one. My plan is GTFO and I am sticking to it. Move out of the engagement area.

  20. I would like to see EVERYONE of these professors FIRED for their actions during this incident! Where is the justice?! Does a student need to die for justice to be done?! Common people! We need to push for this, those professors should not be allowed to teach ANYTHING if they themselves will not follow the rules!

    Now, I know sheltering in place is not a good idea, unless it the situation calls for it. But joking about it, and practically allowing the “active shooter” into the room by leaving (or reopening) the door! I am OUTRAGED by this! Apparently, these professors do not care about their colleagues, students, or other staff’s lives. They should all be F-ing FIRED!

    k, im done.

  23. As an adjunct professor at a private liberal arts university I’ve given this situation some thought (while recognizing that it’s incredibly unlikely to be something I’ll face). Here are a few thoughts.

    1. It is incredibly frustrating that university policy prohibits me from carrying on campus. And I go along with this because, as an adjunct, I’m temporary and expendable. Getting in trouble for carrying a gun on campus would almost certainly ruin my career, likely ending any hope for landing a more permanent teaching position. I’ve weighed the odds and consequences of each option and have settled on leaving my most effective meas of defense at home in order to protect my career.
    2. In the unlikely event that a shooter shows up in my classroom, the best option is to fight back. I always have a good knife on me and hope that if I’m going to get shot, I’ll at least go down stabbing instead of freezing up.
    3. If there were alerts about an active shooter on campus, I wouldn’t ignore it. Better to lose a day of class building a barricade at the door or running for the parking lot than to leave the students as sitting ducks.

    • Ya good luck with all that odds are you’ll get killed.You sre in s gun free zone .That’s where killers go every time.Schools need to get off their high horses (and asses) and prepare for the worst.They are clueless and stupid are are likely targets for qctive shooters.So good luck with that game plan which is no plan!

      • I suppose that if you respond in a scenario like that but find your firearm somehow unusable your follow up plan is to soil your self and die? As important as the weapon may be it is just a small part of being prepared a And by its self it is fairly useless. Self defense dose not start with the weapon and dose not end there either.

  24. I fully understand GTFO; the downside is that, if you just happen to be carrying, you may receive unwanted attention from both campus security and the local police, all of whom will be looking for a man with a gun. In these cases, I assume the police will “suspend” the fourth amendment, and search every last person they run into at the point of a gun. (I haven’t seen any cases where an active shooter was female, so you ladies can run like the wind, assuming you trust the police not to shoot at you for no other reason than that you are fleeing.)

  25. Likewise, carry on Indiana public (state supported, i.e.; Purdue, IU, ISU) university campus’ is not illegal, as long as you have an LTCH or your state’s equivalent. However, students may be expelled (it’s in the handbook) and employees fired at the discretion of the administration. Private colleges may post and not permit carry like any other private property owner.

    However, I would suggest NOT open carrying as libtards and over-reactive campus cops abound. Probably a good way to get shot or felony stopped and dropped. Discrete, deep concealed carry is the better part of valor if you should decide to take your self defense seriously while on campus.

    K-12 carry in Indiana remains largely illegal per Fed edict, although administrators may approve, in writing, a ‘qualified’ individual for carry. A Bill is currently in the Indiana Senate to allow K-12 staff to have firearms locked in vehicles, but not the building, affording them the opportunity for self defense to and from work. Certainly would be better to go the way of Utah, but there aren’t enough legislators with spines to make that happen. One step at a time.

    • Be nice little kiddies, and NEVER open carry. And always cater to the tender sensitvities of the lily-livered. Act like a little girl instead of a man; courage is icky.

      • If you want to open carry where prohibited as an act of protest that is one thing. If however your ACTUAL concern is your safety a bit of tactical forethought may be in order. Remember that typically when people take to protesting un fair or un safe conditions the result tends to be in immediate rise in those same factors.

  26. Sooner or later, an able bodied individual is going to take out a spree shooter at a school. By “take out”, I don’t mean talk down or restrain. Instead, I mean do sufficient damage hand to hand that the shooter is incapable of continuing. Then, I expect he will be pilloried for his “brutal overreaction”.

  28. Ya good luck with all that odds are you’ll get killed.You are in a gun free zone .That’s where killers go every time.Schools needyo to get off their high horses (and asses) and prepare for the worst.They are clueless and stupid are are likely targets for qctive shooters.So good luck with that game plan which is no plan!

  31. My reaction would be something to the effect of, “Color me gone!” The rest of my efforts would be spent GTFOing as quickly and quietly as possible.

  32. Some thoughts on the “GTFO” plan.

    Most campus buildings seem to be designed by the same architect , a demented bane who thinks of the most tactically disastrous room plan possible and then builds it .

    Most classrooms I’ve seen have one entry /exit, located on one specific side of the room .Several classes I take are on the upper floors of buildings, which means a long trip down a hallway with no cover followed by a voyage down a stairwell into Uncertain Areas.

    Given that some spree shootings were perpetrated by multiple attackers, walking out of the building might not be the best idea, especially if the bad guys roaming the campus outside.

    Further, LE at some point will be searching for the bad guy, and itll be an all hands on deck situation.Startling a SWAT team who’s expecting a clear corridor ain’t the way to end your semester.

    Three, if you encounter an armed bad guy down a long hallway or in the open quad unarmed yourself, game over.In the confined spaces of a classroom, even an unarmed person with an improvised weapon can do some harm.One good thing about one entry and exit for a classroom, is that it forces any spree killers down one specific path into the room.

  33. “Someone with a gun could close the doors, pull the shades, put the kids behind cover or concealment, aim their weapon at the door and wait for whatever comes.”

    The aim their weapon at the door seems good, but in reality is a bad idea. I recently took an “Civilian Response to Active Shooters” course taught by Paul Howe of CSAT. I highly recommend anyone who carries a weapon to take this or a similar course. A lot of things you don’t really think about will come out when something like this really goes down. The problem with having your weapon aimed at the door while in plain clothes, is that when the SWAT teams kicks open the door it goes like this; Plain clothes+gun aimed my way=SHOOT!

    After taking this class, it really brought home that the biggest danger in a Active Shooter situations is not being shot by the bad guy, but being shot by the Police or another armed civilian. Once thing we practiced was to keep our weapons holstered or concealed until needed. The more you move around with a visible weapon, the more likely you will be mistaken as the bad guy.

  34. Unbelievable. Why stay in a classroom deathtrap? Those students who obeyed orders to remain in class are lemmings.

    • And you would do what? Walk out into a corridor with no cover and no idea what is happening? The thing about lemmings is they are an evolutionary success, as proven by the fact they exist. The professors seem to be full of fail here but the students if they did nothing it was probably because there was little to actually do.

  35. Such a mentality is hard to even comprehend for most readers of this site. Yet, this is the mentality of so many. A person who would still be in denial during an active threat, imagine their state of mind concerning self-defense at any other time. This is the pathetic sheep we live among. They know that gun control does not work, but they want it imposed so that they have an excuse for their own cowardly mindset. They don’t want anyone to have the option of self-sufficiency.

  36. How about we look at this in a situational standpoint. Most university campuses are huge. Acres upon acres of buildings, dorms, libraries, etc.

    Too many lockdowns, too many drills, too many false alarms. Antis are pushing for better reaction protocols, all the while advocating “enough is enough.” They don’t see that their efforts are directly contributing to the desensitizing efforts.

    I’ve been through so many fire drills that I’m completely unfazed when an alarm goes off. I’ll look around, check outside, smell for smoke. If there’s nothing going on, I’m staying where I am.

    • This is absolutely true. Lots of people either haven’t spent any appreciable time on a college campus, or don’t recall it with accuracy. You often don’t pay attention to stuff going on in/around the building right next door, much less clear across campus. Of course, you can go back to Virginia Tech to see how that is a bad thing. The scene of the first two shootings was nearly half a mile from the building where the rest took place, which definitely would have been out of your normal “area of concern” if you were in the second building.

  37. Fail on the professors, typical head in dirt liberal mindset. Lots of fail from the “students” in the comments also, more head in dirt liberal mindset. Suppose we should be thankful that this didnt escalate to higher levels else we would have new throngs of Colin Goddards filling the MSM with their drivel.

  38. “But you’d hope that some of their charges would know enough to get the hell out of Dodge when they see text alerts on their phone indicating that an active shooter’s on campus.”

    Epitaph: They died like sheep.

    Reminds me of the 9/11 attacks on the WTC. Most of the people who escaped before the buildings collapsed were the ones who left without waiting for an official evacuation order from management or the “authorities”. (Check out the web on Cyril Richard “Rick” Rescorla, one of the true heroes of 9/11. Rescorla was born in Cornwall, England, and came to the U.S. as a child. He served in the U.S. army and fought in the Vietnam War, earning the Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart. On 9/11, Rescorla was employed at the World Trade Center as the security chief for Morgan Stanley and Dean Witter. He died in the attacks after supervising the evacuation of hundreds of workers. Using a bullhorn, he kept people calm by singing “God Bless America” and other songs, including “Men of Harlech.” He did not wait for the police or fire dept to order an evacuation.

    Unfortunately, independent thought and action are routinely discouraged by public school brainwashing, so you can’t expect much of either from the students at any levels.

  41. The only thing worse than being disarmed and packaged up in neat killing boxes, is having the faculty facilitate your demise.

  42. Good Thing That There Are Plenty Of Good Online Schools/Classes To Take, I’d Rather Be A Victim Of A Cyber Attack Than A Victim…

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