Jane McBroom has seen campus rage manifested?she has stared it in the eye. One morning, she was sitting in the Marriott library computer lab when a disgruntled student stormed up to her cubicle to yell at her for taking his parking spot.
“I was so startled,” she said, “I had just parked my car, but I did not remember seeing anyone else waiting for the spot.”
Standing a few feet away from her computer, the young man, his voice raised in anger, drew attention from surrounding students. “It was so embarrassing and not a little bit frightening; he was yelling right in the middle of the computer lab,” McBroom said, “I didn’t even think I had done anything wrong.”
The situation was finally cleared up when McBroom asked the aggressor where he had parked. He gestured north, indicating the parking lot by the engineering buildings.
“Well,” McBroom told him, “I parked over that way,” and she pointed south, to the lot behind Rice-Eccles stadium.
McBroom said the young man was embarrassed, but he still did not apologize. “He just mumbled something about how I had the same hair and the same jacket as the girl who took his spot. Somehow he saw me, and followed me into the library.”
Beyond parking, a large administration and Olympic hassles squeeze students’ pressure points?for some, provoking a storm of irrational anger.
When asked what sort of things ignite their anger on campus, students answer, “parking,” “parking,” or “long lines.”
McBroom, herself, was able to empathize with the student who assailed her in the computer lab. Having spent many mornings circling crowded lots on campus, she knows how frustrating it can be: “Parking makes me beyond control angry. Sometimes I honestly feel like I could hurt someone.”
While most students do not respond violently to parking frustration, McBroom’s experience was not unique. January’s police reports contain several incidents of parking lot rage. One student reported that a man yelled at her for taking a spot he claimed was his. Frightened, she moved to another spot, but when she returned to her car, it had been dented in two places.
At a basketball game, a bus parked in an area that is closed this year due to the Olympics. Angry at being told to move, the driver argued with a parking services employee, allegedly bumping into the parking enforcer on purpose. Another driver had to come move the bus. No charges were filed, but the angry driver was dismissed from his position.
Also in January, two women got into a fight in a parking lot when one opened her car door into the other woman’s car. They ended up filing citizen’s arrests on each other.
In December, only one incident involving parking disputes was filed, and another one in November. The case in November ended with the aggressor running into a student with his car, injuring her leg after she “took his spot.”
With 30 percent fewer parking spaces on campus, there has been an increase in tension. How students express their frustration varies with the individual.
Dr. Lauren Weitzman, a psychologist at the University Counseling Center, said it is not unusual for students to come into the counseling center seeking help with anger problems. She said students might get angry when they are stressed out or feel overwhelmed. “Anger can be a very healthy emotion if you learn how to channel it right, but it can also be very scary and destructive,” Weitzman said. She cited the recent shootings at a Virginia law school as an example.
On Jan. 16, a law student angry at being dismissed from the Appalachian School of Law for failing grades, stormed the administration building, killing the dean, a professor and a student. Anger is a problem on campuses nationwide; learning more about this emotion is critical, Weitzman said.
Dr. Brian Riedesel, a counseling center psychologist said people experience anger when they perceive a threat or an injustice.
“It’s the fight or flight response; when a person chooses anger, they are choosing the fight response.” The flight response would be when a person turns their anger inward as in depression or anxiety.
Last summer, according to police reports, a student applying to graduate school was so frustrated with the Registrar’s Office that he threatened to bomb campus. After his anger was diffused, he called back and apologized.
Sometimes students become agitated by academic pressure, especially during high stress times such as finals week. Last semester, one student threw a trashcan into a classroom and broke the glass to a fire extinguisher after he was not given 20 extra seconds to finish a final exam, according to police reports.
The counseling center provides outreach workshops, presentations, psychological assessments and individual, group, or couples counseling to students, staff, and faculty. The first appointment is free. Weitzman encourages clients to express anger in positive and harmless ways. One method she suggests to them for releasing pent-up anger is throwing glass bottles into recycling bins. Hurling objects and listening to the sound of glass exploding can be very liberating.
Sometimes people prone to aggressiveness are required to take a U anger management class by court rulings or by employers. In the class, students can learn about anger and ways to resolve it.
Marcia Lavalle, the instructor of the course, said she tries to create a classroom environment that is comfortable and inviting enough for students to be able to share their experiences. She said her goal for her students is for them “to understand to the depth that they want to about their own anger.”
Commenting on the potential violence of anger, she said, “People don’t realize they have choices. They feel like they are victims, but they need to realize they have responsibility, too.” In class, she told her students that “anger is always valid, but behavior is not.”
If angry, she encouraged her students to ask themselves, “Is my anger helping out the situation? Does it do any good?” She said that students should step back from the situation and consider it objectively. Anger is triggered by an action or an event that is then filtered through our perceptions, generating a reaction?but often (or always) our perceptions are distorted by personal biases.
Lavalle told her students anger can be energizing and empowering, but it is a problem when it is too frequent, too intense without positive results, too long, and when it leads to aggression. Lavalle said that it is important not to consider anger “hush-hush.” She said, “By putting it out there and talking about it, we can dilute it.”