On Feb 12, Hiner 201 overflowed with people who came to hear the panel on Sandy Hook and America’s reaction to the tragic event. There were five confirmed speakers on the panel: Dr. Jennifer Apperson and Dr. Danette Gibbs of psychology, Dr. Kristen Nugent of social work, Dr. David Magill of English/women and gender studies, Dr. Agnich in sociology, and Professor Jeff Halliday in communication studies.
“The goal is to open up an honest dialogue and to really get the different perspectives of sociology and psychology and social work involved to really bridge the gap and work as citizen leaders to move forward because no one simple solution is going to fix this, and I think that an open discussion is really the first step, both here in Farmville and nationwide,” said Paige Reitz, one of the students in charge of the panel.
The goal of the panel was to do just that: to get a frank and honest discussion flowing through the room after the five aforementioned speakers had finished their topic. The first speaker of the night was Dr. Laura Agnich, who has a doctorate in sociology from Virginia Tech. She is also a former staff member of Longwood University.
“The homicide rate in the United States has been declining very sharply since the mid 1990s,” said Agnich. Agnich went on to discuss the reality of gun violence in America and how gun violence in schools is only a very small percentage of the total violence: “Depending on how we define mass murder, whether it’s two homicide victims or more, if we look at just two homicide incidents and more there have been more than a hundred world wide in almost the last century. Very few as deadly as Sandy Hook or Virginia Tech have ever occurred, but they are occurring with increasing frequency.”
But why is this? Well, the saturation of America with guns might be a clue as to why the rise of gun violence has occurred. In the 1990s, there could be one gun for every adult in the United States. However, Dr. David Magill was up next to offer another idea as to the cause of gun violence.
“Why did this happen is the question that keeps getting asked [referring to Newtown],” said Magill. “To start to think about that question, I’m going to move from the individual to the cultural. I’m going to consider how masculinity and those ideals play a larger role in understanding how these types of events and horrors come to be.”
The culture that we live in as a society makes certain aspects of life appeal to men in a way as to make masculinity the answer to all their problems. After Fight Club came out, people started making real fight clubs; as if getting into a circle and beating each other up would solve all their problems.
Sociology and gender studies weren’t the only topics discussed. Dr. Apperson and Dr. Gibbs discussed the importance of not putting a stigma on mental health problems and to allow people to get the treatment that should be offered to them.
Dr. Nugent talked about the community aspect of the issue, almost going off of what Magill was saying. Halliday focused mainly on the media of aspect of it all.
After all the speakers went and discussed their chosen topics of the evening, the people in the audience had their chance to either ask questions or leave if they so desired. The questions added additional information on an already interesting panel.
