For a few weeks in April of 2007, I abandoned my usual seat in the middle of my classrooms at The University of Memphis for a chair closer to a door.
From my new seat, usually in the very back of the class, I studied the layout of the rooms and recalled similar design details of the buildings in which they were located.
Door in the far corner, stairwell past that on the right, double-doors about ten feet from there, parking lot after that.
I wasn't preparing for a quiz on interior design. I wasn't imagining architectural remedies for aging buildings on campus.
I was planning an escape route.
Thirty-two people were gunned down at Virginia Tech the day before I moved to my new seat.
A crowd of students stood around a TV in the Tiger Den the day it happened, April 16, watching CNN in stunned silence as the body count kept rising.
Some cried. Some skipped classes to phone friends and loved ones.
And, like myself, they all began looking looking over their shoulders more frequently after April 16.
Whether allowing individuals to carry guns on college campuses could have prevented that tragedy, or eased the anxiety of millions of students following it, we'll never know.
But it's a question that U of M President Shirley Raines and the Tennessee Board of Regents have made clear they're not willing to explore — and rightfully so.
The answer to controlling guns on college campuses, or any school campus, is not more guns.
Civil rights do, indeed, afford a person the right to defend themselves.
But in an educational setting, a police officer, someone trained to use a firearm in high-stress situations, should respond to such incidents, should they occur — not my Biology II lab partner.
In the uneasy days following the shooting at Virginia Tech, as well as the murder of Taylor Bradford on this campus less than six months later, my hyper-awareness provided some relief.
But it's a state of mind I'd prefer not to revisit.
Knowing my professor could just as easily retrieve a Glock from his desk drawer as a ballpoint pen would place me, and undoubtedly many others, in the same state of subdued paranoia.
William S. Burroughs, the author, said: "After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military."
I agree with his sentiment. And though history provides me countless examples to the contrary, I still have more faith that policemen and soldiers can hit their target.
