Guns on Public College Campuses

The Texas State Senate has passed a bill on May 10, 2011, public college campuses another step closer to allowing concealed handguns (Texas Senate Passes Guns on Campus Bill, 2011). Due to its high liberalism and anti-gun mentality, the University of Texas at Austin will certainly not be the first campus to convert to handgun accepting; however, if the bill becomes law, the university will inevitably be forced to follow suit (Texas Legislature Debates Guns on Campus, 2011). It is conjectured that once The University of Texas at Austin begins its transition towards a campus, which allows concealed handguns, that multiple venerated faculty will leave the school. This list of faculty includes Dr. Dean P. Neikirk, a professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and holder of the Cullen Trust for Higher Education Endowed Professorship in Engineering. Due to his detest towards guns on campus, Dr. Neikirk will likely leave UT to teach at a campus with policies he is more comfortable with. Through review of groups such as the Faculty Council Executive Committee, it is seen that the majority of faculty, Dr. Neikirk included, are not comfortable with guns being on campus, whether legal or not. Their reasons are based on student and personal protection. The faculty of the University of Texas at Austin must not be given a reason to leave the esteemed school; therefore, we must stop the processes of allowing concealed weapons on our campus, before the professors take the heart and soul of UT with them.

The concern among UT faculty is not simply hysteria. A concerned faculty member will argue that more injuries and casualties among students and faculty are likely to occur due to student stress, anger or full mental breakdown on campus. Typical college students find themselves at their limits during at least one point of each term. College is a new experience for undergraduates, full of experimentation, sleep deprivation, grade struggles, and expectations. These problems continue for many graduate students. For some, it means being thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, being in their seventh year, and unable to graduate because they cannot get their work passed due to the lack of proper feed back on a dissertation. With guns available to these stressed and unstable campus students, UT faculty believes the potential for disaster will raise to a new high.

An opposing group that has lobbied for the passing of the bill soon allowing guns on campus is the Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, or SCCC. The SCCC constantly debates against guns on campus causing greater harm than help. The group would state that lives could have been saved in past school shootings such as the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007, if the five helpless faculty members killed had the means to defend themselves. Professor Phillip Barrish is another professor likely to take his skills elsewhere after UT allows firearms on campus, due to his past experience with gun violence. Professor Barrish argues against the views of the SCCC, based on his fearful face-to-face observation on September 28, 2010, when Colton Tooley came to campus carrying a gun. Among many other faculty members at UT, Barrish believes that if any other student had caused further panic in heavily armed Colton Tooley, catastrophe would have resulted (Office of the General Faculty and Faculty Council, 2011). An action such as a student pulling a gun on Tooley would have stopped his ascent to the top floor of the library where he committed suicide, but the death count at UT that day might have been far greater than that of a single, yet still tragic, suicide.

Faculty members are not only worried about their own lives, but also for the lives of their students. With guns allowed on campus many faculty members such as Professor of Sociology and Law Mary Rose will not allow their presence to imply that they condone that students have the means to cause themselves harm (UT Law Faculty - Mary Rose, 2005). A recent statistic update by the American Association of Suicidology shows that a terrifying one in twelve college students have made a suicide plan. These suicides are usually disabled by a failed attempt, but still result in injury, or disabled by the lack of the resources to commit the suicide swiftly. The suicide plans and actual attempts would likely be far more successful if the student is able to hold a gun in their possession or easily access a roommate's gun, on