Mary Grace Triplett ‘24
Warning: This article discusses gun violence in schools. If this topic makes you uncomfortable for any reason, please know that you are not alone. This article seeks to start a conversation about how to improve safety in the Law School.
All of us have been impacted by gun violence. I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, only a ten-minute drive from The Covenant School. In 2023, The Covenant School was the target of the deadliest mass shooting in Tennessee’s history.[1]And just months before that, three students—D’Sean Perry, Devin Chandler, and Lavel Davis Jr.—were shot and killed on UVA’s grounds. These tragedies reflect the grim reality of our modern age—students, teachers, and school administrators are often the victims of senseless violence. Last year, two hundred and twenty-seven people in the United States were wounded or killed on school property.[2] Unsurprisingly, these shootings have left students feeling anxious, unsettled, and fearful when something at school feels out of the ordinary.
In addition to these feelings of hopelessness, students may also feel frustrated about what can only be described as an information gap. Does the Law School have procedures in place for these kinds of situations? Are members of the public required to “check-in” when they enter the school, or can they move freely about the Law School? How do we lock the classroom doors in the event of an emergency? These questions are typically met with a response that students should contact Student Affairs if they have questions or feel unsafe. But even if Student Affairs is the proper avenue to address day-to-day issues, the school desperately lacks a broader discussion about safety. From our perspective, this issue seems to be on the backburner until—tragically—it comes to the forefront in the wake of another shooting.
These feelings inspired me and my friends to write a petition to the Law School administration last spring. Our petition included several goals: to identify feasible ways to make our school safer, to increase transparency about our safety protocols, and to start a much-needed conversation about campus safety that would include students, faculty, and staff alike. Our collective “first step” is to host an event on Law School Safety and Response, which will be led by members of UVA’s Threat Assessment Team and the Office of Emergency Management. The event has been organized by Annie Somerville ’24, Ethan Young ’24, Kennedy Williams ’24, and myself. It has been sponsored by the Student Bar Administration, and we welcome other student organizations to endorse the event as well.
The event will be tailored specifically to the Law School. It will offer an opportunity for students to ask questions to Law School administrators and UVA Emergency employees about how to respond in unsafe situations. First, it is important to acknowledge that the Law School is in a unique position because it is open to the public. On any given day, many individuals who are not affiliated with the Law School will roam our hallways for tours, events, or clinics. These contributions and community interactions are an enriching part of our student body experience. But this dynamic occasionally leads to uncomfortable and anxiety-inducing situations. Last year, for example, there were at least two occasions in which a non-student appeared in a course and participated in ways that were concerning, and at times, aggressive. This event will offer guidance and suggestions on how you could respond appropriately—or choose not to respond—in those situations. The hosts of the Law School Safety and Response event will also discuss the possibility of an active shooter. While this topic is certainly difficult, we feel that preparing for such a situation is far less difficult than the alternative.
Finally, our classmates have raised important questions about what the administration is currently doing to protect our community, and what other measures could be put in place. A large part of the problem is not that the Law School lacks those procedures, but that students are unaware of them. To have productive conversations about reform, we must first take the time to understand the school’s existing protocols and the reasoning behind them. This event will provide an opportunity for students to learn the procedures already in place and suggest new ideas for the future. We do not have the answers about how to make our school safer, or how to help students feel more comfortable in the classroom. But before we can solve the problem at hand, we must enable a discussion concerning the key information between students and administrators so that we are all on the same page.
There are many ways for students to fight the gun violence epidemic that our schools currently face. Through organizing this event, we have chosen to instigate change within our own community by facilitating dialogue, improving protocols, and preparing for an emergency. But this is just the beginning of a conversation, which we hope will spur further community organization and activism around this problem.
We hope you will join us at the Law School Safety and Response meeting on Wednesday, February 28th at 1 p.m in Brown 152. It will be an opportunity to learn and ask questions about an issue that affects each of us daily. Feel free to reach out to me, Annie, Ethan, or Kennedy about questions, comments, or concerns that you may have.
[1] Adeel Hassan & Emily Cochrane, What We Know About the Nashville School Shooting, N.Y. Times (Sept. 13, 2023), https://www.nytimes.com/article/nashville-school-shooting.html.
[2] Naaz Modan & Kara Arundel, Another Record High: Counting School Shootings in 2023, K-12 Dive (Dec. 20, 2023), https://www.k12dive.com/news/2023-total-school-mass-shootings/703007/.