Installation, 2018
Virginia Tech University
April 16, 2007
32
Northern Illinois University
February 14, 2008
5
University of Alabama
February 12, 2010
3
Oikos University
April 7, 2012
7
Santa Monica College
June 7, 2013
5
Seattle Pacific University
June 5, 2014
1
Umpqua Community College
October 1, 2015
9
On March 14th, 2018, Parkland High School survivors arranged a nationwide 17 minute School Walkout to End Gun Violence. The 17 minutes commemorated the 17 victims of the Parkland shooting, which took place on February 14, 2018.
My installation, 62, focuses on mass shootings on college campuses during the 2000’s; the first being the Virginia Tech Massacre in 2007 and most recent Umpqua Community College in Oregon. Over these 8 years, 62 college students and faculty members lost their lives to gun violence. The piece specifically focuses on shootings that took place on campus grounds, arguing that the institutions have a responsibility to keep their students safe and help promote systemic change. I chose to focus on the 2000’s because that is the period that I and my Chapman peers attended elementary through high school.
To represent these 62 lives, I used 62 school desks. The desks serve as physical symbols of bodies as well as academic institutions. The structure of the desks formally connects to the barricade structure that would be made in the case of an active shooting. The arrangement of the desks symbolizes a pile of bodies, and a symbol of the movement being mobilized by students and the overthrow that needs to happen in order to make radical change. By removing the desks from the classroom, I am symbolizing the lives and academic careers wasted at the hands of gun violence and lack of institutional policies to keep them safe. The gum and written inscriptions on the desks are indexes of the students who sat in them, learned in them, and a reminder of the lives that are missing from them; that had their education and lives stripped from them.
Since the piece focuses on shootings on college campuses, I chose to install it on Chapman University’s campus on Memorial Lawn, behind the University sign. I chose to focus on college campuses because the installation was coinciding with the Chapman walkout and I wanted to contextualize the issue for the average college viewer. I also think it is important to commemorate victims that passed away years ago, during a time when mass shootings are so regular that victims often go forgotten over time. The desks are all different styles to represent the number of years the shootings took place over and the different ages we occupied them ourselves throughout our schooling. While the piece focuses on victims on college campuses, it speaks to the several years of a student’s academic career and forces the viewer to reflect on their own school experiences and puts them in the mindset of younger students who have been most recently affected.
Since the Columbine High School Massacre in 1999, school shootings have been on the rise. The Virginia Tech Massacre in 2007 being among the deadliest in US history. We are in the midst of a political revolution and call to end gun violence. Americans, especially students, are stepping up and saying enough is enough and #neveragain. As a student growing up during the 2000’s I have grown up in the age of mass shootings and experienced the fear that they present. I remember in elementary school practicing safety procedures in the case of an active shooter. In eighth grade my class had to barricade ourselves in a classroom because there was an active shooter in the area.
I am both saddened to be a part of this generation, and proud of our resiliency and rising activism. It is strange to think that soon I will not be part of an academic institution, however I am inspired by my fellow students nationwide that are stepping up to make change, and I wanted to contribute to their fight and conversation with this piece.