By Alice Mathias (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-04-24 07:19

Since the shootings at Virginia Tech a year ago, our school has made it as difficult as possible for students to put guns in their films.

Joe Wallenstein, who oversees film production by students, explained that using fake weapons could be misunderstood by passers-by, and misunderstanding could lead to calamity.

Just days ago, the faculty banned all guns in first-semester student films and mandated that higher-level students attend a police firearms training session before using fake guns, and under many circumstances pay a police officer $450 to oversee their productions.

One of my classmates avoided the permitting process by replacing a gun in his script with a banana, turning his Western-themed cowboy film into a slapstick comedy. In his in-class critique session, the professor told him that the banana "does not work."

Many other universities around the country are also trying to balance freedom and safety. At Harvard, a dormitory that had prided itself on not having a security officer now has one. Dorm residents protested, but the college stood firm, insisting that the freedom of movement they had lost was secondary to their safety.

Stanford, for its part, still has no professional dormitory guards, but it is developing an ID-card-based access system that is meant to eventually apply to all campus buildings.

Emergency text message systems are becoming increasingly common, and many colleges now require students to submit their cellphone numbers.

I have lately heard classmates apologize in advance for potentially disturbing content in their movies, or crack jokes to avert suspicion that they may be emotionally troubled. Our teachers encourage us to be "edgy" (it sells) but we are also aware that, since Virginia Tech, stepping over that edge into the realm of "disturbing" could land you in the dean's office.

I admit I was startled when, looking over that young woman's shoulder, I saw that the gun in her film was being aimed at a student behind a desk begging for her life. Can it be a good idea to present school shootings as entertainment?

The filmmaker explained that the story was about a student who resisted peer pressure to skip class on what turned out to be the day of a school shooting. Her intent was to reveal how good intentions (not skipping class) can end up being a mistake because of forces beyond your control.

My worry is that because of forces beyond her control, her movie could end up like Oldboy, a violent South Korean film that won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2004, and then helped inspire Seung-Hui Cho to carry out the Virginia Tech massacre.

Freedom and safety are becoming increasingly difficult to balance, it's plain to see. But when I consider that more than 29,000 students have bravely returned to classes at Virginia Tech this year, I'm heartened.

The author is a graduate student at the University of Southern California film school The New York Times Syndicate

(China Daily 04/24/2008 page9)