Period 40: Run, hide, fight
At the start of every semester, my campus sends around a reminder to go over with students what to do in the event of a campus shooter. Our options are Run-Hide-Fight. The instructions encourage running, “Leaving the area quickly is the best option if it is safe to do so.” Then there is hide: “When you can’t or don’t want to run, take shelter indoors.” And finally, fight: “As a last resort, you may need to fight to increase your chances of survival.”
K-12 educators tend to have trainings and practice drills that they perform with their kids. While they may feel ridiculous and performative, we’ve seen how these drills have made it possible for some children to survive, or even develop better defenses for Gaza solidarity encampments.
On college campuses, there is no training, just this single sheet of vague guidance. I recall in the early days being given an actual hard copy, or perhaps they came through the mail? Now we have a pdf attachment. I stopped going through Run-Hide-Fight with my students years ago. At this point my students, coming from high schools with regular lockdown drills, are better prepared than I am – they know far more than the single sheet of paper that is all the training I’ve ever gotten.
Since January 20 I’ve been reflecting on the policies of university campuses regarding academic freedom, school shooters, and Project 2025. Run-Hide-Fight has been around for many years as our sole preparation for a threat to the lives of our students. The over-focus of Run and Hide as our primary options leaves us unable to figure out how to Fight a threat from which we cannot run nor hide.
Silencing Speech Makes Fight Even Harder
Many universities, mine included, spent endless hours over the summer refining campus policies in order to clarify how little free expression and protest is available to students, faculty, and staff without dire consequences. We have decibel limits in terms of how loud we can protest, we have to ask permission in advance, and of course there are ever more stringent limitations on the presence or use of any “structures.” These rules are applied differentially depending on the cause you support.
Project 2025, and the Republican agenda to wipe out higher education, has been around for quite some time. Yet many campuses were eerily silent as those first Executive Orders were passed down. They knew the attempts to resegregate American life were coming, they knew immigrant students and staff would be in danger, they knew the threats to trans life. So they spent those first weeks… scrubbing calendar invitations and websites of the words diversity, equity, and inclusion. Their health centers canceled surgeries for those under 19. Some clarified guidance around ICE compliance, others gave instructors little more than a shrug and a “you do you.”
Current university strategies to handle Project 2025 mirror Run and Hide. These strategies involve leaving behind things you care about (“personal items”), helping yourself over others (“consider whether [helping] puts yourself at risk”), staying quiet (“get to a place where you can’t be seen… silence your phone… don’t make any noise”). They are about complying in advance – ceding ground, getting away, letting them have what they want. If there is a shooter at my kid’s school? I want my kid alive so if they have to jump out a window and run that’s what I want them to do.
But we are talking about administrators with six and seven figure salaries trying to preserve centuries-old institutions (note: in this strained metaphor the “personal items” left behind are the actual students, staff, and faculty). Run and Hide are what we teach children in this dystopian world where they may be confronted with gun violence in their schools. Fight is what we should doing when many campuses have the will and power of tens of thousands of people against ChatGPT-manufactured executive orders that are simply one interpretation of the law.
We are seeing some glimmers of Fight – states coming together to sue the government over cuts to NIH funding, for instance. But the few places we are seeing Fight – around money, and pretty much only money – show us what universities truly value.
Collective Care and Rapid Response
To win against a fascist regime that says the fundamental nature of my work, the existence of many of my friends and family, are illegal requires not only speaking truth to power but building collective power. In both Sanctuary movements and Palestine liberation organizations people have developed rapid response teams: people who can provide immediate legal aid, childcare, financial aid, witnessing, prison support, and more. These are the movements from which all of us should be taking our cue (and in many cases, where we should be getting involved).
Those of you who deal in dangerous subject matter, those of you in precarious positions, those for whom your identity makes you a target – you deserve care and centering right now. We need to build rapid response teams in our communities, workplaces, and schools to ensure we do the carework our institutions are unlikely to prioritize.
Some rapid response roles to consider, from an academic workplace perspective, that may be useful to you:
People on call to walk people to/from their class
People on call to attend class to provide witnessing/evaluation
People who can review emails, social media replies in order to remove threats and hate speech
Police liaisons for protests
Prison support for protests (as well as training – even if you are not planning an event where you are going to do anything that violates a campus rule or law you cannot always control how the cops will antagonize you)
Grievance committee so someone can attend meetings with HR, Title VI, your boss with you
Visual campaigns to reaffirm the important roles you play
Letter to the editor campaigns to get the word out locally on important issues
Phonebanking times so people can have some accountability in calling reps
Signal group chats to keep people informed and build solidarity
Some of us have workplaces where we have some small ability to hold our institutions accountable – through unions, shared governance, or both. Do not cede this ground and instead commit to increase your efforts here. American history is labor history – many of the most important gains and solidarity movements are at their core labor movements.
I understand the temptation to Run or to Hide, and that for many of us, that’s all we’ve ever been taught. But Fight is possible and it is energizing. While of course we have to pace ourselves for a long fight, know that when you start it makes it possible for you to do more.
Fight isn’t just about yelling. It’s about stemming the tide of authoritarian measures that are trying to resegregate the workplace and our education system; eliminate trans and nonbinary people; undermine reproductive justice; and deport undocumented people and refugees. We need people to invest in harm reduction and radical, collective care right now. If you are in a position to do more, then do it.
But do not underestimate the power of two things: refusing to comply with the ways your institutions may be complying in advance, and becoming someone in your community others can count on.