marketplace.org‘s got its knickers in a twist about the imminent arrival of campus carry to The Lone Star State. Never mind that these institutions of higher learning are creating rules that make it damn near impossible for legal concealed carriers to go about their business throughout their day. (Open carry? Don’t be ridiculous!) To make their point that campus carry is a threat — rather than a defense against threats — writer Amy Scott offers the following evidence . . .
I just didn’t think that was appropriate, to have firearms, concealed or not, in classrooms and other learning environments,” said Fritz Steiner, dean of the School of Architecture.
Steiner is leaving Texas for a new post at the University of Pennsylvania, partly because of the new gun law. An architecture class might seem like the last place someone would reach for gun, but it’s an intense and competitive environment, where, Steiner said, professors critique students on very personal work.
“Anyone who’s ever taken an examination or defended a thesis or a dissertation knows those are stressful situations,” he said. “I don’t think that having a firearm present when one is involved in a very emotional interchange is a good idea.”
We’ve already highlighted Dean Steiner’s “partial” protest against campus carry. But his fear of gunplay during thesis and dissertation review is worth revisiting, singular as it is. But wait! There’s more! Sort of . . .
Another popular professor, of economics, has also left. At the University of Houston, the head of the faculty senate recently advised fellow professors to limit their office hours, be careful discussing sensitive topics and not, “go there” if they sensed anger. A slide from the presentation ended up on Twitter.
Pharmacology professor Andrea Gore, chair of the faculty council at UT-Austin, said she doesn’t plan to change the way she teaches anatomy and physiology.
“But I have heard from my colleagues that some of them are going to be much more cautious about taking more provocative points of view,” she said.
Gore also worries that some of the state’s best and brightest students might opt for private colleges, which are exempt from the law, or go out of state.
“When you hear from students or you hear from their parents, which I have, that they’re not going to go to a public university anymore in the state of Texas,” she said, “that translates into many people who are never going to come back to Texas because they establish roots somewhere else.”
Good riddance? Meanwhile, I wonder what Professor Gore means by “provocative points of view” that could result in armed confrontation. Liberal ideas? Conservative ideas? As far as I remember, the most prominent aspect of university instruction was sheer boredom. And if a student did go crazy (out of the blue, unlike the Virginia Tech shooter), I’d like someone to be armed nearby. Anyway . . .
Even those who oppose the law concede its day-to-day impact could be minimal. More than half of UT’s 50-thousand students are under 21 and too young to qualify, said Goode.
“We’re talking about somewhere between half a percent and one percent of our students we anticipate will have licenses,” he said. “That doesn’t mean they’ll all carry their handguns on campus.”
Still, when he looks out into his classroom next fall, he said he won’t help but wonder who’s packing.
So even without mentioning Utah’s no-problem history of campus carry, what’s up with all this talk of “bracing”?
Brace yourselves, constitution ahead!
Also, prohibited or not it’s all good with the right cover garment.
“I have a right to a gun free campus.”
Oh, look at him. He’s trying to make a coherent thought. He discovered his hands and feet just last week, you know. They grow up so fast.
Yeah the word “right” has been repeated so many times that it means almost nothing anymore. There are actual natural rights afforded to human beings, and then there are your personal feelings and softies like that can’t tell the difference.
Now, that the Bern is convincing the youth that college is a “human right”, we are heading down the tax payer funded gravy train of “rights” for which the absurdities will have no end.
Maybe we can mooch off this gravy train ourselves and get some government ammo…
Here is something that will make your head turn. Ask some of these young bernie lovers what *isnt* a human right. Living arrangements, smart phone, food, water, jobs, etc. If college is a human right, why isn’t food and water and should we put all grocery stores out of business in favor of government run food distribution sites? Last country that tried that still has an angry little dictator in power and their people are starving while their great leader tries to mess around with nukes.
I can abide water and food being human rights. But, just like the 2nd Amendment, you gotta buy your own and the gov’t should only protect it, not control it.
Thats the point. When everything is a human right, and human rights have to be paid for by the government, everything gets paid for by the government. At the very least it exposes some of the far lefties and exposes them for who they really are.
younggun21 – To clarify the situation, and this is the BASIC point that all lefties miss; Nothing is ever paid for by the government. The government has no money that it has not appropriated (stolen) from its citizens in the form of taxes and fees and fines. Every penny that the government spends is a penny that came out of some productive citizen’s pocket to be redistributed by the government, usually in an attempt to guarantee low-information voters (non-productive citizens) will vote for them and their projects next election.
You mean like; the ‘right’ to ‘free’ housing, ‘free’ health care, ‘free’ food, ‘free’ education, etc., etc.?
All of which must be provided by somebody else, ofc, because none of those things are actually ‘free’.
And, since they want them provided by big brother, they will be nowhere even near ‘free’, but will instead cost many times what they used to, just like obombacare.
I have a sneaking suspicion that when he looks out and wonders who is packing, it won’t be the ones he mentally labels as “problem children” for that class.
Better have a lot of Waaambulances on standby. The special snowflakes will be hitting the floor with a case of vapors by the dozen.
I believe this has more to do with their feeling free to behave like egotistical jerks toward students than any controversial topics or critiques. They might actually have to at least pretend to care about their students if this keeps up.
An armed society is a polite society. I always wondered if people would scream and curse at political protests & such if the person they were verbally assaulting might be armed.
Ironic as it might seem, guns are a powerful DE-escalator among rational adults. No one’s going to escalate the situation if it might cost them their life if they take it too far.
“…among rational adults.”
There’s the one huge and glaring flaw in the “armed society is a polite society” thesis. A whole lotta people ain’t all that rational, and most adults behave like children.
“No one’s going to escalate the situation if it might cost them their life if they take it too far.”
But that happens all the time among the criminal class. They’re all armed, and their beefs (quite often over ridiculously small slights) escalate to violence with clockwork regularity. I suppose the caveat “among rational adults” is in play in that instance, too, though.
I’m not arguing against an armed society. I think the benefits of such far, far outweigh the drawbacks. But I don’t think it’s the panacea that Heinlein envisioned, either.
It would be eventually, because in a fully armed society, before very much time passed the irrational would become an endangered species. The irrational are lazy, shiftless, and do not possess much in the brain cells department. As such, they aren’t(and won’t ever be) much of a match for a practised and rational individual. Unless they chose to work to become less shiftless and lazy, but if they did that then they wouldn’t really be the useless and lazy ones any more, would they?
The reason we have so many irrational persons is precisely BECAUSE our largely disarmed society has been coddling the neer-do-wells for so long.
“provocative points of view” that could result in armed confrontation”
Yeah, and that one from a prof of anatomy and physiology? Esqueeze me? The only “provocative points of view” she might be discussing inside that class would be unfounded propaganda she was forcing on her students rather than doing her damn job.
I sure hope all these whiners leave TX and don’t come back. We don’t need them or their BS.
“I don’t think that having a firearm present when one is involved in a very emotional interchange is a good idea.”
So, the student-attendees of liberal colleges don’t believe they can keep their emotions in check while debating a grade or which position Frank Lloyd Wright occupies in the hierarchy of American architecture. But thousands of lowly police officers (who these liberal geniuses rank as their societal inferiors in every way) manage to have emotional interchanges with traffic offenders, drug offenders, gang bangers, protesters, and other citizens every single day, with minimal gunplay.
What’s more, thousands of US troops, at the same age as these emotionally-coddled students, go about their business overseas armed to the teeth, and manage to follow the rules of engagement while facing emotional terrors that would cause these profs to wet their beds for the rest of their lives.
Open-carrying students should band together and pick out a bunch of stuffed animals to carry with them to hand out to students in distress. Be great fun to mock these wimps by treating them as the children they are.
They’re projecting. These coddled princesses know that they’re so emotionally unstable that they can’t have a passionate discussion without the overwhelming desire to murder their opponent, restrained only by the lack of an appropriate tool close at hand, so they FEEL like everyone else must be the same way, when it couldn’t be further from the truth.
Well said and dead on!
^^^THIS.
“I assume that everyone must be as petty, easily offended, and emotionally unstable as I am”.
+100 Defens, well written sir.
I have a right to a Starbucks venti caramel frapaccino right this very second. A caramel frapaccino better materialize right in front of me right now! I know – it’s ridiculous – but so is the former.
In all reality, campus’s have permitted guns for years now. Years. Only now they are allowed in classrooms and buildings, etc. So their dream of a gun free pro victim campus actually dissolved years ago – they just don’t know that it happened.
Love the shout out to Utah at the end of the article. Still amazes me daily that these people can’t/won’t look at other states with
campus carry, and note that…nothing happens.
I went to college and law school. In all of those years, in all of the “heated” (and incredibly rare) discussions, I have never once seen a threat of violence, a chair or a punch thrown, a knife drawn, nothing. I went to school with arch conservatives and radical lefties, yet all managed to behave themselves. How many of these professors have had problems with violence in their classrooms in all the (collective) years they’ve been teaching? If it ain’t happened before, what makes them think it is going to happen now.
Well written. Further, professors don’t really like to encourage contrary views anyway. My wife (in her late 50’s) just finished up a degree at a local community college. There was no debate encouraged or stimulated on any topic – and since she was taking law and anthropology classes, there must have been some opportunities for that. Classes were blankly polite – most students don’t want to engage anyway, and fewer still express any sort of opinion that doesn’t embrace the official party line.
I found that at the big corporations where I worked too – although there may be heated discussion in smaller groups, at the large divisional meetings, people kept their traps shut, knowing that a bad performance review was just around the corner from voicing an opinion that wasn’t 110% SuperExcited about the latest campaign or software version being touted.
Because guns make people evil, of course. Even the largest pacifist in the world would instantly be transformed into a mass-murdering lunatic if he/she was placed in the mere presence of a firearm. Duh. God, I hate academia….
This is the point that annoys me the most. How many classroom or office hour arguments have risen to the level of a slap, let alone a thrown fist? Yet all of a sudden, if you “go there”, there will be murder?
Please.
Funny how the liberals, that’s about all the Austin & UT elites are, always seem so scared. Saw an interview with a professor up here in the Panhandle at WTA&M. Forgot his name, but his take was the criminals who now carry on campus will continue to do so and those licensed will now be able to do so. So many students are under the age of 21 and can not get a CHL that this whole uproar was moot. As I have been out and about I have seen two people open carry. Both at the same funeral of one of their mothers. As far as the profs in Austin and Houston and any other liberal brain washing installation, I hope they all leave the state. If you can’t take the constitution then leave. It’s just a sad commentary that I have to have a license to do what the constitution protects. Then again, maybe we chip away at this and might finally get the constitutional right to carry. One step at a time might get there.
…and just why is Marketplace covering *this* story, anyway?
I am so happy to see liberal fascist leave conservative states. Perhaps they can move to one of the “safe places” they created, like Oakland California or Chicago.
We should soon have concealed carry here in GA. It irritates me that Governor Deal has been dragging his feet on signing it into law. Today is his final day to sign or veto. If he vetoes the legislation I shall do my best to see that he is never elected to anything again here in GA. If he lets it become law without signing it, well what else can we expect from mainstream establishment Republicans?
When it comes to establishment go along to get along Republicans we can expect they will never support expansion of gun rights. National reciprocity has been dragging for years because they will not give it the full support that it deserves. Likewise removing sound suppressors from the NFA ’34 which can easily be justified as they are legitimately classified as safety equipment and hearing protection. Nope, when it comes to the 2nd Amendment establishment Republicans are clearly fair weather friends that still have to be pushed into supporting what they should know to be the legitimate rights of their constitutes. Clearly they either believe they can fool us into believing they support us, or figure we will be too stupid to primary them when they are next up for election!
Nobody ever calls out these idiots for their far reaching ideas that some how having a difference of opinion will lead someone to murder. Yes, people can get mad without feeling murderous. Or are liberals so insecure in their point of view that if someone disagrees with them, they want to murder that person.
Wow! It’s amazing to me that these professors now plan on leaving because of campus carry. But I’m thinking you live and work in Texas! A place that’s very pro gun. I pretty sure none of those professors had altercations with conceal carriers off campus. So there is no point getting a heart attack because students want to carry on campus.
The professor is leaving a community with a murder rate of 2.8/100,000 for one with a murder rate of 15.9/100,000. His new home is 5.6 times more dangerous. Not Very Smart.
“I just didn’t think that was appropriate, to have firearms, concealed or not, in classrooms and other learning environments,” said Fritz Steiner, dean of the School of Architecture.”
I didn’t think it was appropriate to have Constitution-ignorant people be dean of School of Architecture, but that’s none of my business.
So it is a good thing right? With spots opening up due to hoplophobes leaving, state tuition should go down to increase draw. Supply and demand. Being pro-gun gets you lower tuition. 😉
The limited supply and large demand of “higher education” in recent years is what caused all these fly by night Western New Hampershire Governor’s American State College of Universities to spring up everywhere…
Colleges are in need of some serious demand choking in order to bring the market back to manageable levels. This could be done easily if the .gov would step out of the picture a bit and stop backing student loans, basically agreeing to be the strong arm for the banksters…
But, I wouldn’t expect that to happen anytime soon.
bite the pillow we are coming in dry
But slowly. Inch by inch. Like a gentleman.
This is what it must have felt like in the 50s and 60s during the civil rights movements. Change the word gun to black and poof! there you go.
Just cause you don’t “like” and civil right does not make it null and void.
Half to maybe 1% would be licensed? Most of those are going to be seniors, grad students, working adults, veterans. Not exactly trouble makers. Then there are the online students who add to the enrollment numbers, but who never even step foot on campus.
So much ado about nothing. Campus carry? Meh. Most people won’t notice, won’t know, won’t care. It’s an infinitesimal minority of self-appointed busybodies and worrywarts, desperately seeking relevancy, who are in hysterics over this and bothering everyone else.
Quick get those textbooks ripped up so we can soak up all of the blood before it flows into the streets! FOR THE GROWN CHILDREN!
Mmmmm! Yess! The tears of unfathomable sadness! Yummy!
As a former teacher at an institute of higher education, I think many of these professors are vastly over estimating how engaging their lectures are…
Still, when he looks out into his classroom next fall, he said he won’t help but wonder who’s packing. That’s the whole idea. If it’s concealed, how will they know ? To paraphrase the gay rights “people”, ‘We’re here, we’re carrying’ get used to it’
The UT dean, like most architects, is a fruit. Within 20 years, engineers will be designing most buildings and architects will be pissant decorators adding frufru to an engineer’s design.
Just curious, how many of you live where you grew up/went to school?
Nothing personal against Ms. Gore, but does she really think I wanted to move to TX? I was more than happy in MD (yeah, I know, I know). Sure, we disliked and distrusted Annapolis and MoCo and PG and Bal’more, but we were happy up in the mountains. Heck, we were getting ready to sell our house in town and buy a little 4 acre farm.
But, people go where the jobs are. And when work says, “get ye off to yonder Houston, where we do oil and gas,” you listen and go. And the people of Houston are mostly very lovely, unless they are driving, but this place is hot and humid and concrete and hot and flat and goes on forever and hot and crowded and hot.
So she can rest peacefully, knowing that these kids are as likely to come back as go anywhere else, all depending on the work they do.
Glad there was a shout out to the fact that this changes nothing for the majority of people. Too bad they refuse to acknowledge the empowering it does for those few who choose to exercise their constitutional rights.
No thanks Fritz Steiner, you’re not welcome in Pennsylvania. The University of Pennsylvania is fine with kiddie-diddlers & their accomplices… I mean bosses… But your alarmist disarmament bullcrap isn’t welcome. And if you think Texas is bad, we’re far friendly to gun rights here, Fritzy!
If you sincerely think that your students or coworkers are going to assault you if criticized, your problem is definitely not guns.
I wonder how these idiots figure that disarming good people will prevent bad people from . . well, being bad?
But it was the same when Texas passed open carry. The antis all predicted there would be blood flowing in the streets, and . . . nothing happened. I’m sure all those peace loving Liberals were disappointed that there weren’t bodies lying everywhere.
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