Michigan university gives faculty hockey pucks as ‘last resort’ against active shooters

A university in Michigan has equipped faculty members with hockey pucks to throw at any potential active shooter on campus as a “last resort.”

The faculty union has spent $2,500 on the first batch of pucks for staff members at Oakland University in Auburn Hills, The Detroit News reported Tuesday.

{mosads}Each of the pucks, which cost 94 cents to make, will be printed with the union’s logo and distributed at no charge.

Roughly 800 faculty members already have them and another 1,700 are expected to go to students, the outlet noted.

Oakland University Police Chief Mark Gordon said the idea came to him during a training session when he remembered being hit in the head with a puck as a youth hockey coach.

The puck “caused a fair amount of damage to me,” Gordon remembered. 

“It was not a well-thought-out strategy,” Gordon said. “It was a spur-of-the-moment-thing that had merit to it and kind of caught on.”

There has been no studies or research on the use of hockey pucks as a defense to an active shooter, Gordon acknowledged.

A puck could be used with other defense mechanisms like chairs, staplers or anything that has weight, he added.

Hopefully, the pucks will “empower faculty and students to have a plan to have something to defend themselves rather than just freezing in place,” Gordon said.

The union is also hoping to fundraise enough money for interior door locks to be added to university classrooms, said Tom Discenna, president of the American Association of University Professors.  

“As far as the hockey pucks are concerned, I expect eventually we’ll run out of money to give them to people,” Discenna told the outlet. “Maybe students will buy their own. It’s just the idea of having something, a reminder that you are not powerless and you are not helpless in the classroom.”

The move comes after there was a nationwide debate about arming teaching following the Feb. 14 shooting deaths of 17 people inside a Parkland, Fla., high school.

A Pennsylvania school district armed teachers with miniature baseball bats to use “as a last resort” after that shooting.