February 21, 1994

Too real. That was the problem. An informal survey taken by one of the grad painters in my first year revealed that about half the 2D students in our year owned at least one gun. Kendra was among them, having a pistol she received from her mother, a graduation present to take with her from Kentucky to life in the big city of Carbondale. A few weeks prior to this day, she decided to use her gun as a subject for possible paintings. She removed the loading clip (so that it couldn't be fired and had no bullets), and brought it to her studio to do sketches of. When she wasn't actively sketching it, she wrapped it in a scarf and stuck it in the back of a drawer in a desk in her studio. Campus security guards wandered through the building at times, including overnight. One night one of these guards let himself into Kendra's studio, and started looking through her sketchpads. Seeing the drawings of the gun, he decided that they were too real to have been drawn without the subject, and searched until he found the gun, which he confiscated. This day was the next morning, when Kendra was summoned for a meeting with campus security, local police, and department faculty. While she had broken school policies by having a gun (even an incomplete one) on campus, the security guard had broken a number of laws with his illegal search. A compromise was worked out where there were no charges, and police held the gun until Kendra had the proper Illinois permit (she had one from her home state) and she promised never to bring it to campus again.