What I am about to say may sound terrible, but I ignore most of the Code Blue Emergency Response messages that USU sends out. Usually, I figure it is just a test or the school’s email system has been hacked and It’s just another email about natural male enhancement or something like that. Last night, however, I was paying extra close attention to my phone as I awaited a very specific update from the University on the state of the Common Hour Lecture by Anita Sarkeesian entitled “What if Super Mario had been Super Maria.”
Sarkeesian is a feminist who speaks out about misrepresentation of women in video games. She has been targeted by gamers and anti-feminists for her stance that women deserve equal, non-sexualized representation in video games. She has received numerous death threats and they seem to follow her to speaking engagements.
Yesterday morning, various USU staff members received a threatening email stating that if Wednesday’s Common Hour was not cancelled, then the sender would carry out a massive attack reminiscent of something called the “Montreal Massacre.” The sender claimed to have guns and several bombs (he called it a “collection,” but honestly, who collects bombs?) and threatened that he would carry out the “the deadliest school shooting in American History.”
I was at first, and still am, very skeptical of the threatening email’s origin. The author claimed to be a USU student who had been hurt by feminism, however several things about the email lead me to believe that it originated elsewhere. The first was that the emailer cited a Canadian example for a school shooting, the “Montreal Massacre,” rather than using one of the (regrettably) numerous American examples of shootings on University Campuses. Virginia Tech, University of Texas, even Columbine (though it was at a high school); all of which are shootings that would be more prominent in the mind of a typical USU student. Despite the suspicion, the university decided to investigate the threats and beef up security measures for the event.
As I looked further into the story, I began to research the “Montreal Massacre” that the sender of the email referenced. I had never heard of it. At the same time I started looking into the Canadian shooting, the announcement came out that Miss Sarkeesian would be canceling her speech and I wondered why she would have made that decision. Alternatively reading between news releases about the cancellation and articles about the “Montreal Massacre,” I began to agree with Anita Sarkeesian in her decision to cancel the event. I know not everyone will agree, but here are the reasons that I see canceling the event was a good idea.
1. Anti-Feminist shootings have happened before on college campuses.
The “Montreal Massacre,” referred to in the Tuesday’s threatening email, is better known as the École Polytechnique massacre. It took place in 1989 in Quebec, Canada and it was one of the deadliest shootings that had ever taken place at that time. A 25 year-old man named Marc Lépine entered the campus of the École Polytechnique College and began a rampage that resulted in the death of 14 people and 14 more injuries. He began his attack by entering a classroom, separating the students based on gender, and then shooting all nine of the female students presetn, killing 6 and injuring 3. He then proceeded to shoot 19 more people (all but four of them females), before turning the gun on himself.
The crazy part of the story is that Lépine left a suicide note, and it sounds eerily familiar to the email received by USU officials yesterday. In the note, Lépine states that he did it to “send the feminists, who have always ruined my life, to their Maker.” The sender of the email in yesterday’s case also blamed and threatened women stating, “I will write my manifesto in her (Sarkeesian’s) spilled blood, and you will all bear witness to what feminist lies and poison have done to the men of America.”
The “Montreal Massacre” sparked national debate about feminism and the victims of the attack were seen as victims of anti-feminism and violence. The fact that the author of yesterday’s email cites this as an example is terrifying. It shows that he emulates Lépine and hopes to accomplish something similar. Precedent is reason enough to be cautious of the event, but the fact that the threatening email referenced and emulated the most famous American cases of mass violence against women makes me even more wary.
Memorial of Montreal Shooting
2. It’s not about gun control, it’s about safety.
When Sarkeesian cancelled the event she sent out a tweet on her personal page saying, “Forced to cancel my talk at USU after receiving death threats because police wouldn’t take steps to prevent concealed firearms at the event” This tweet sparked immediate controversy between gun control activists and pretty much the entire internet (including my roommate who normally doesn’t care about anything, so that’s saying something). Some claim she cancelled the event as a political move to promote herself. Others claimed that concealed weapons would actually protect her and prevent anyone from trying anything at the event. No matter what the argument was, everyone was focussing on the wrong issue.
The real issue was that the safety of students was at stake. Whether you support concealed weapons on college campuses or you are against it, you can agree that guns and bombs are dangerous. We wouldn’t let someone into Sarkeesian’s seminar if they were carrying a jar full of Ebola (Whether it was concealed or not) because that would put everyone at risk. And if someone had threatened to release Ebola at an event, we probably would check for bottles and containers (I don’t actually know how diseases are stored) before letting people in, or cancel the event if everyone started to get a fever.
After any shooting, people always asks how it could have been prevented. This is because any degree of tragedy is unacceptable. When the safety of students is at risk it’s better to not have an event than to regret having one because something tragic happened. Threats should be taken seriously because they are a warning sign. We shouldn’t open up a new issue and claim that the whole thing is about gun control now, we should focus on the fact that students were targeted by someone who is unstable and claims to be capable of doing something terrible.
3. We should stop saying “We do not give in to terrorists” and start saying “The safety of our citizens is more important.”
A lot of people are criticizing Sarkeesian for canceling her engagement because they say she is “giving in terrorists demands.” Criticism became so bad that Sarkeesian tweeted “To be clear: I didn’t cancel my USU talk because of terrorist threats, I canceled because I didn’t feel the security measures were adequate.”
It should be said that I have the utmost faith in our campus police. Heck, they are so vigilant that I can’t even park in two-hour parking for 121 minutes without finding a ticket on my car. When they say that there is no threat, I believe them. However, anything can go wrong and even the best security measures can fail. Let’s weigh the options for a second and see what is really at stake. On the one had we have a threatened attack that could hurt multiple students, on the other hand, we have an hour lecture that will be attended by a few hundred people, most of which will most likely forget about it in a few days. It seems like a no-brainer to cancel the event, no matter how small the level of threat is. It’s not giving in to terrorists, it’s protecting students at a the small cost of a cancelled event. There is no political statement in saying, “We want to protect students” other than “protecting the lives of students is good.”
As a fan of video games, I was excited at the prospect of hearing Miss Sarkeesian speak. I was disappointed when she cancelled, but I think that it was a good call to be cautious rather than risk the lives of students for a speech. When you take the politics out of it, that’s all it is.
