Mistaken both as a scholarly student and somebody who had an interest in how gun control affects law enforcement, my criminal justice professor asked me if I would have liked to participate in a panel that was going to stretch across four local colleges in the area. Lost in the temporary ecstasy of having been chosen for something other than designated driver, I agreed. He then emailed me hundred page court cases which left me knowing less about guns in American than before. The other student chosen from our school was a freshmen history and politics major, whom talked circles around me with the professor. Our job was to develop topics for the panel of law enforcement officials to discuss in terms of gun control and law enforcement.
Thankfully, our professor asked the two of us to meet with him a few times before we left to Williams College for the initial discussion. He was very passionate about constitutional history, and taught me what an originalist is, which we came to an agreement was somewhat of a self-contradiction. I wanted to jump into some postmodern subjectivity when we discussed Justice Scalia’s not-so-liberal view of constitutional history, but for most of our discussions I did a lot of listening.
When the night of the four college’s preliminary discussion, the other student bailed on getting a ride with out professor, insisting that she had to stop by her aunt’s on the way back. The car ride was nothing short of awkward, and I feel like I was trying to hard to come up with things to talk about. There was talk of law schools and the occasional sharing of cafeteria stories, but for most of the ride we kept our eyes out of the window in silence.
Parking at the Williams campus was tricky, but not as difficult as an attempt to find our designated building. It began with a “Sch” and from what the students were telling us, it hadn’t gone by that name in years. Like mice running through a maze, we followed the campus’ directory only to find that the name really wasn’t on there either. After some very aggravated minutes of searching, a student finally directed us to the building, which we were left to learn that another meeting was scheduled before our event and that our early arrival gave us some time to wander the campus even more. Hurray.
Having been here once before to work on a research paper, I led them to the library, where our professor told us about his previous job experience working with the libraries’ periodicals. He explained that he had been the go-to guy for news, because he’d get the papers in the morning before anybody else did. But like all good jobs, he said with a sigh, all good jobs must come to an end.
We walked back into the Schsomething building to find out that the doors had been locked on us, and we then had to wait for a student to kindly let us inside. The “Get Political” pizza party that was going on inside of our room was just winding down, and one of the advisers of the meeting approached us.
Introductions were brief, but then he asked me what I did at SVC. I told him about the creative writing thing and how I just recently decided that I wanted to write memoir and fiction instead of essay, and he gave me a lecture about why the are of the essay is critical to America. I contemplated kicking him. He asked me what authors influenced me, to which I immediately froze. Then he took the liberty to answer for me, recommending a book that had absolutely nothing to do with anything that came out of our mouths. No, I will not read a book about how Jimi Hendrix influenced Vietnam. It’s not my cup of coffee.
The discussion itself was long, but very intriguing. There were no students from MCLA, but the horde coming off of the Bennington College bus more than made up for their loss. There were even two students from Williams colleges, a psychology and political science major. As we all introduced ourselves, I realized that I was the only one whose taken a humanities discipline among the group. Again, most of what I did was listen, but I said one thing (which may have actually deterred the conversation away from its focus, but I was proud nonetheless). There was a lot of back and forth about social science studies in which I had no idea existed, and there were some very diverse opinions in regards to gun control.
When the discussion ended, I noticed that my chair had actually backed out of the circle, as if I were trying to remove myself or something. My professor was eager to talk with the Bennington College students, probably because they were the most active in the discussion. There were some topics written on the board, which I immediately forgot, but what I did retain was a lot of the personal stories people tried to wiggle into their arguments. I wouldn’t mind sitting in that circle again if got the chance to hear and listen to who all of them really were.
During the drive out, we actually got lost trying to leave the campus. Ironically, we both agreed that it would be best to transgress and sneak onto that one-way street, but we were unable to find it again. We got lost in the deep woods behind the college, accidently driving into an athletic field. At one point my professor turned me and said, “This is dumb. I feel like I’m a the Hotel California.” My life couldn’t agree more.
Stage Fright 