The College Fix

Remember when chalk boards and white boards used to be used for instructing students? Now they are being used to stop school shootings.

Exhibit A: Officials at the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore, believe that something must be done to combat campus violence.

Something….

Well, anything, really would be better than nothing…

That must be what they’re thinking because The Baltimore Sun reports the following:

Calling “campus violence a reality” to prepare for, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore announced plans Thursday to spend $60,000 on the Clark Kent of teacher supplies: an innocuous-looking white board that can stop bullets.

The high-tech tablet — which hangs on a hook, measures 18 by 20 inches and comes in pink, blue and green — can be used as a personal shield for professors under attack, according to the company that makes it, and a portable writing pad in quieter times.

“It needs to be a great whiteboard and a useful tool so that it doesn’t get hidden in the closet,” said maker George Tunis. His Worcester County company Hardwire LLC starting out making military armor, then adapted it for the classroom after the tragic shootings last year at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where 20 children and six adults were killed.

“When Sandy Hook happened … a light bulb went off that it’s really the teachers and administrators” who need protection, the father of two said. “Those brave souls were trying to close the gap and get to the shooter and stop him, but they didn’t have anything that could stop the bullets along the way.”