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Roselyn Tantraphol was up late emailing her students locked down at Michigan State University as authorities searched for the gunman who killed three students and wounded five others late Monday.
One week earlier, she rushed to pick up her 6-year-old son from his elementary school, which locked down after a hoax active shooter call at the nearby high school.
“Why is my first grader completely comfortable with a lockdown protocol? And why are my students at Michigan State having to follow a ‘Run, Hide, Fight’ protocol?” said Tantraphol, 46. “I feel like we are coddling the gun lobby and allowing our youth to be terrorized.”
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Speaking by phone with USA TODAY on Tuesday, Tantraphol expressed frustration with the state of American politics and pessimism about the prospect of change.
“You’re experiencing the events and all the fear and the sadness and rage that comes from the senseless violence, but you’re also experiencing the collective trauma of all the past shootings — Parkland, Uvalde, Sandy Hook. And you’re seeing that this is your future too. And that this country refuses to fix this problem,” Tantraphol said.
Tantraphol, an adjunct instructor at Michigan State University, said her son, Kai, has been doing lockdown drills since kindergarten. He initially thought the false alarm was a drill but then heard there was a hoax at another school.
Tantraphol said she had to have hard conversations with Kai that day about what happens next time — about what to do if she is delayed by traffic and who is authorized to pick him up if she can’t. There is always going to be a “next time,” she said.
“We’re asking elementary school students to be as comfortable with lockdowns as they are with recess,” Tantraphol said, adding, “While parents pay the price – productivity is shot, mental health is shot – it doesn’t hold a candle to what the kids are going through.”
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After she and Kai pulled up into their driveway that day, he looked down at the birds fluttering around their yard, Tantraphol said.
“When he saw the birds, without missing a beat, he said, ‘Mommy I think they’re trying to find a place to lock down.’ And my heart just broke at that point,” she said.
Tantraphol was home, a few miles from Michigan State, when she received the university alert just after 8:30 p.m. Monday saying there was a shooter.
She hoped it had been sent out of an abundance of caution. But then came a blur of texts and calls. She scanned Twitter and news outlets for information.
“It became quickly clear that this was an active shooter situation, and a dangerous one,” she said.
Like many MSU professors, Tantraphol stayed up late. She said Kai watched as she was on her phone, communicating with students, checking in with colleagues and letting loved ones know she was safe.
“‘Do you remember last week? Do you remember how that was a prank?'” Tantraphol recalled saying to her son. “‘Well, you know, mommy teaches at Michigan State and something happened tonight and it was not a prank. It was real.'”
Tantraphol said she hated putting Kai to bed with that thought in his mind.
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Tantraphol’s class was canceled Tuesday. She also runs a PR agency based in Lansing, and several of her colleagues are Michigan State alumni.
“We started out the day on Slack saying that if anyone needed to step away today because it was too much, they of course could. Even though you’re not on campus, you are affected by this as a Spartan,” she said.
Tantraphol said she felt “numbness” Tuesday. She’s received an outpouring of support from friends, family, colleagues and even strangers online.
“That’s a salve, I’d say, for the soul, but it’s not a solution for this problem,” she said. “It’s disappointing that you hear a lot from political leaders, but there’s never been enough of a collective backbone to do anything about it.”
Run, hide, fight:School shooter drills can be traumatic, but do they work?
Contact criminal justice reporter Grace Hauck via email or find her on Twitter at @grace_hauck.
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