By Duncan Baumgarten Grayscale photos of children holding shooting targets to their chests hang silently on the walls of the exhibition.
Art and activism have always been intertwined, and the gun safety issue is no different. In celebration for Kate Wool’s new exhibit I am NOT a Target, on October 5, featuring the above mentioned pieces, the Fairbanks community held a gun safety community forum at Raven’s Landing. Featured was Dr. Karen Gaborik, the superintendent for the school district since 2014. Joining her was Kaden Monzingo, a recent West Valley graduate, Dr. Valerie Gifford, and Dr. Rob Duke, both assistant educators at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The discussion opened with Dr. Gaborik. She emphasized her responsibility to “look at the big picture”, when considering gun safety around schools. The superintendent made a point to showcase the school district’s motives and efforts to minimize the risk of any firearm-related incidents for Fairbanks. Her main point was prevention, far more than in-the-moment response. Her two major points were “prevention” and “security”, pointing to the safety measures being brought to the school district. Namely, Joy Elementary, which is the first in the community to engage a “Camera Buzzer” system. Following the beginning of the school day, the doors are locked, and any visitor must answer to scrutiny via a camera, feeding into the front office. She cited the importance of engaging the system in the two schools originally chosen, Joy and Tanana, because of the distance between the front doors and the front office. She reassured attendee of the importance of allocated resources concerning security. “We would be remiss,” Gaborik said, “if we didn’t pay attention to security.”
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