UVA Batten welcomed experts from the nonprofit sector and the federal government who shared their professional insights and personal lessons to prevent gun violence in a discussion moderated by Assistant Professor Kyle S.H. Dobson.
“Gun violence takes a lot of different forms and can really depend on who you’re asking and where you’re asking that question,” Dobson told the audience at the Great Hall, which included several members of the Central Virginia Violence Interrupters community group, as well as Charlottesville’s police chief.
The speakers were Eddie Bocanegra, senior advisor for community violence intervention at the U.S. Department of Justice, and Nancy La Vigne, director of the National Institute of Justice of the United States. The event was a program of Batten’s Public Engagement in Governance Looking, Listening and Learning Laboratory (PEGLLLLAB), directed by Batten Professor Brian N. Williams. The lab hosted several other events over the past week in honor of Devin Chandler, D’Sean Perry and Lavel Davis, Jr., three UVA student-athletes killed by gunfire on Grounds two years ago.
“At the Batten School, we continue to bridge gaps of understanding through our engagement, research, teaching and service,” Williams said. “We believe in engineering change through intentional engagement and by expanding policymaking conversations to include not only those who create and administer policies, but those who live and are affected by them.
“We will continue our efforts to excavate, investigate and address the problems behind the wicked problem of gun violence and will do so in memory of Devin, D’Sean, Lavel, and so many others across our community, state, and nation.”
Bocanegra acknowledged the trauma, often hidden, of those on the “front lines” of gun violence, whether as victims, perpetrators, community members or law enforcement officers. “If I took off my suit you would see scars and gang tattoos,” he said. “What you don’t see are the emotional and psychological scars that I carry from childhood to my adult life.”
That frame of reference guides how Bocanegra approaches his work, and is a cornerstone to achieving effective solutions, he said. Both he and La Vigne stressed that while academic research on the issue is important, what is paramount is integrating into affected communities and understanding that each one is unique in terms of root causes and solutions.
“There’s this notion that programs can just be taken off the shelf and introduced into communities,” La Vigne said, “[but] to really address this issue, it’s not about a program, it’s about a process, and that process in my mind is a partnership between [affected communities] and researchers on the ground [who] are helping identify what is unique about the nature of the gun violence issue in this community, answering the who, what, where, why how and when. And often the answers are different from other places, and then tailoring responses as you go.”
Both speakers noted that short-term fixes — driven by politics and election cycles — too often don’t last, while the dynamics around gun violence and solutions can be a decades-long trajectory to achieve lasting solutions. They encouraged students interested in this work as future policymakers or researchers to “engage authentically” and “leave the ivory tower” and deeply engage with communities.
