Editor's note: Murray Leaf is Speaker of the Faculty and a professor in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences. He is writing in response to Mercury staff writer Alex Ransom's Jan. 12 opinion piece, "Campus concealed carry law would protect rights, students."
At its Dec. 4 meeting, the University of Texas System Faculty Advisory Council passed a resolution opposing any change in law that would make it easier for anyone to carry weapons on a campus other than authorized police officers. This would of course include concealed handguns. The motion passed unanimously.
First and foremost, weapons of any kind are inconsistent with the nature of a university. A university should be a citadel of reason, of civil and civilized debate in a common search for truth. There should be no threat of violence or of any other sort of coercion.
This also applies to relations between faculty and faculty. Science and scholarship depend on it; we have a strong professional obligation not to take criticism as a personal attack, affront or insult. We are obligated to take it (and of course also to give it) as reflecting an effort to point out objective difficulties and suggest alternative courses of action.
Among faculty, we have a reasonably good reason to expect that these values will be observed. If people cannot stand up to criticism, disagreement and disappointment, they usually do not become faculty in the first place.
We also have many institutional mechanisms such as review by committees and outside experts that reduce the temptation to construe professional criticism as personal attack.
Students, in the nature of the case, represent a much wider range of scholarly commitments and attitudes. Some find college work liberating and exciting. Some find it unpleasant, alien and stressful. Some find the university community on the whole exciting and supportive. Some find it hostile and competitive.
A few, who are not necessarily poor students, take failing an examination, criticism or even the fact of disagreement, as a personal attack or confrontation, and a small portion of these attack the faculty member in turn, either verbally or, sometimes, physically.
This is particularly likely to happen in required courses, and especially those that are particularly difficult - which are also the most difficult courses to teach. This is not hypothetical; we have such confrontations on campus every year.
It also happens that some students are mentally unstable, alienated and bitter for reasons that have nothing to do with educational philosophy or purposes. This number has been increasing in recent decades for two main reasons.
First, the total portion of the college-age population going to college has increased. Second, many more students are graduating high school with dependencies on psychoactive drugs to prevent erratic behavior.
This adds a further element of risk: They may engage in violence not because of academic stress or conflict with faculty, but simply because of alienation from-or perceived conflict with- other students. For various reasons (which the faculty Senate is trying to change) faculty members have no way of knowing who these individuals are until they have a confrontation with them.
Failure to share (and act effectively on) information of this sort was a major contributing factor in the murders at Virginia Tech.
Finally, faculty recognize that in their classrooms they are responsible not only for their own safety but for the safety of the class as a whole.
It should not, therefore, be surprising that to faculty it is perfectly obvious that the possibility that students may be carrying concealed handguns, legally or illegally, should not be added to the mix.
The possibility of legal handguns in most cases would dangerously complicate what should be the automatic response to the sight or suspicion of any weapon; namely, to call the police and evacuate the area in whatever order is most practical.
With specific regard to the argument printed in The Mercury, I should note three points.
First, the NRA is not generally known as being dedicated to public safety, and the group's positions are opposed by many groups that are so dedicated.
Second, the primary threat in classrooms and other academic buildings is violent irrationality, not criminality.
Third, to say that a concealed weapon is "by definition, not visible" is not true. It is often possible to see that a person is carrying one, and the reaction to such an observation should be immediate and uniform in accordance the current campus police recommendation - call the cops.
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