Small camouflage tents are assembled in front of the fountain on Dallas Hall Lawn. A long range gun sits innocently to the side. Multiple small Call of Duty-style guns rest on the ground. “Do you guys wanna play,” a grinning man in grey camo pants with a red toy gun asked.
At a dorm event on SMU’s campus hosted by the Virginia-Snider Commons, the question makes sense. There are a bunch of games littering Dallas Hall Lawn. People race each other through a bouncy house. Students wait eagerly in line to fill their unstuffed elephants with stuffing. The shooting game positioned next to the stuffed animals, however, raises an eyebrow.
Shootings on school grounds are a reality for many people. Gun violence is very prevalent in American society, and school attacks are no longer rare or shocking.
Laser tag and paintball don’t alarm people in the same way the shooting activity does, as they are so obviously fake. In paintball, the people who are shot stay alive with only neon colors and bruises as collateral damage. Laser tag is played with goofy nicknames, such as Captain Underpants, as you wear a light-up vest. These are very suspended from reality.
A bunch of young adults squealing, running and hiding from their peers with real-looking guns, feels very real.
The corn dog I’d just eaten churned in my stomach as I watched this “shootout” unfold. I cringed as the man in charge said, “They’re gonna hunt you.” Watching a girl in a floral summer dress race by smiling, I can’t help but imagine a stark dichotomy of the same girl running with tears in her eyes and blood staining her dress. It’s a dark image, but it’s not an illogical leap to make.
A group of girls walk up to the man, inquiring how to play. He hands them each a gun and says, “Run for your lives.” He gives them a bit of a head start before he aims at them. It’s not clear what the point of the game is or if there are teams. Everyone seems to be fending for themselves. People eagerly line up to shoot the long-range gun that looks a bit like a bazooka.
There’s something immensely unsettling about seeing joy on people’s faces as they essentially act out violent events. I can’t even fault them too much. We live in a society that accepts fake violence as fun, but this is not a video game. In broad daylight, some people don’t even have a problem with toy guns being next to the bounce house.
But I also thought about people walking by who might have briefly felt scared before realizing the fake guns were a part of an event. What about a police officer who saw a student with what looked like a weapon? How are we supposed to respond to real threats if we make them into a game?
Especially in light of the shooting at Florida State University in Tallahassee on April 24, I think the SMU community can find better entertainment for its students than pretending to hurt each other.
