November 2, 2015
The faculty, staff, and graduate students of the Department of Philosophy, whose names are listed below, oppose allowing guns in our classrooms, offices, and other campus locations. We believe that the implementation of Texas Senate Bill 11 makes the campus more dangerous for faculty and students. Continue reading Department of Philosophy Statement on Campus Carry
The undersigned faculty of the School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin strongly oppose Senate Bill 11 (the “campus carry” bill) that is scheduled to go into effect August 1, 2016.
We believe that there is no reasonable justification for permitting concealed guns to be taken into classrooms, faculty offices and other advising or review spaces in our school. There is no evidence that the presence of concealed weapons in classrooms or other university buildings promotes student safety. There are serious reasons to believe that allowing firearms into our buildings will increase stress, anxiety, and the risk of violent events.
Our fundamental commitment as teachers is to create classroom, studio and advising environments of trust and openness. The School of Architecture employs a unique process for the evaluation of student work. Learning and developing the professional skills unique to the design and planning professions occurs through intense discourse, debate, and open critique. Student work is presented and publicly critiqued by reviewers from within the school along with reviewers invited from other universities or from architecture or planning offices. This is a very intense process where students, often tired and stressed, are exposed to public evaluation and criticism. Allowing firearms to be carried at these public reviews would create risks and would fundamentally change the nature and quality of the review process.
The School of Architecture includes several nationally ranked programs. In addition to the risks to our pedagogical culture described above, allowing weapons to be carried in our buildings would seriously undermine our ability to recruit top students from across the country, to recruit leading scholars and designers to join our faculty, and to secure reviewers from outside our institution who are leaders in the fields represented in our school. Continue reading Statement of the Faculty of the School of Architecture on Senate Bill 11
November 12, 2015
The horrific shootings at Umpqua Community College in Oregon and subsequent incidents of gun violence elsewhere have prompted renewed efforts to keep our colleges and universities both safe and open. One measure increasingly proposed is legislation already approved in eight states—that would allow any licensed gun owner to carry concealed weapons on campus. Advocates of such so-called “campus carry” legislation contend that the presence of weapons in classrooms and other campus facilities will deter those seeking to wreak violence. Oregon is one state where “campus carry” is legal, but that did not prevent the tragedy. Colleges and universities closely control firearms and prohibit concealed guns on their campuses because they regard the presence of weapons as incompatible with their educational missions. College campuses are marketplaces of ideas, and a rigorous academic exchange of ideas may be chilled by the presence of weapons. Students and faculty members will not be comfortable discussing controversial subjects if they think there might be a gun in the room.
William McRaven, chancellor for the University of Texas system and a former member of the Navy SEALs who rose to the rank of admiral, opposed passage of “campus carry” legislation in his state. “I feel the presence of concealed weapons will make a campus a less safe environment,” he said. “If you have guns on campus, I question whether or not that will somehow inhibit our freedom of speech. If you’re in a heated debate with somebody in the middle of a classroom and you don’t know whether or not that
individual is carrying, how does that inhibit the interaction between students and faculty?”
The undersigned organizations strongly support efforts to make college campuses as safe and weapon free as possible for students, faculty, staff, parents, and community members. We therefore oppose efforts to enact “campus carry” laws and call for their repeal where they already exist. We encourage colleges and universities to embrace critical incident planning that includes faculty and staff and to advise all faculty and staff of these plans. We further call on these institutions to rely on trained and equipped professional law-enforcement personnel to respond to emergency incidents. State legislative bodies must refrain from interfering with decisions that are properly the responsibility of the academic
community.
Signatories
American Association of University Professors
American Federation of Teachers
Association of American Colleges and Universities
Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges
November 9, 2015
We the undersigned members of the faculty in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education, strongly oppose the Campus Carry Legislation. As teacher educators and researchers on teaching and learning, we are deeply concerned about the potential silencing of academic discussion and inquiry that the presence of dangerous weapons in classrooms will have. Education can only occur in a safe space. Positive learning communities are built upon trust, safety, openness to ideas, and freedom from intimidation or retaliation. We hope the legislature will reconsider this policy and allow us to foster learning and inquiry in a gun-free environment. Continue reading Department of Curriculum and Instruction
November 10, 2015
We the undersigned faculty members of the Business, Government & Society Department believe that the best evidence clearly indicates that the proliferation of guns in our society has made people less safe and that the presence of more guns on campus would similarly make UT a less safe place for students, faculty, and staff. This is the view of a strong majority of the faculty members in the BGS Department. Continue reading Business, Government & Society Department
We, the undersigned members of the Department of Religious Studies, oppose the presence of concealed weapons in our classrooms, offices, and departmental spaces. We are convinced that concealed weapons will have a detrimental effect on the free expression of ideas, and we reject the notion that the presence of concealed weapons in university buildings will make us safer. Scholars of religion study ideas and phenomena that can arouse strong emotions. Our classrooms and offices should be safe environments for discussion and debate and places where we and our students can address controversial topics without the fear of violence that the presence of concealed weapons can elicit. Continue reading Department of Religious Studies Statement about Concealed Weapons
November 3, 2015
The Department of Integrative Biology at The University of Texas at Austin opposes guns in classrooms, laboratories, and faculty offices. We believe that guns in educational and research spaces will impede learning, discovery, and intellectual freedom and thereby undermine the University’s mission to achieve excellence and advance society
We the undersigned faculty members of the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering believe that, except for those carried by law enforcement personnel, guns should not be allowed in any building at the University of Texas at Austin. The first canon of the code of ethics of the American Society of Civil Engineers begins “Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public.” We believe that allowing guns in our classrooms, laboratories, and offices would be inconsistent with this canon. Further, we believe that allowing guns in campus buildings is contrary to the directive of the Constitution of the State of Texas that we should become a “university of the first class,” because it will make the retention and recruitment of excellent faculty and students more difficult. Continue reading Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
The American Academy of Religion (AAR) is deeply concerned about the impact of Texas¹s new Campus Carry law as it relates to Texas universities.
The law, which was passed earlier this year, will take effect in 2016. It allows licensed handgun owners to bring concealed handguns into buildings, including classrooms, on Texas campuses. The law gives public universities some discretion to regulate campus carry but stipulates such regulations may not “generally prohibit” or “have the effect of generally prohibiting” those licensed from carrying concealed handguns.
The AAR believes that maintaining safe environments for free inquiry is vitally important to every classroom in higher education. As scholars of religion, we are especially sensitive to classroom security. The critical study of religion can be unsettling and uncomfortable: it often questions closely held beliefs and probes religious convictions.
The AAR believes that the Campus Carry law and similar laws in other states will compromise the safety of the spaces in which we teach, introduce new threats to college campuses, and result in harmful effects on students, professors, and the free expression of ideas. The AAR urges university leaders to consider classroom restrictions on campus carry to protect physical safety and safeguard academic freedom.
We, the undersigned faculty and staff of the UT Austin School of Social Work, strongly oppose guns on campus. Social work is a field committed to social justice and to the health and wellbeing
of individuals, families, and communities. We work tirelessly to prevent violence and trauma, and all forms of oppression. As social scientists, we base our recommendations and interventions on rigorous scientific evidence. Research evidence is conclusive that concealed weapons do not reduce crime or violence. In fact, access to firearms increases the risk of violence and tragedies. We believe that permitting concealed weapons on campus will only create fear, intimidation, panic and harm. And because violence and intimidation are tools of social control, we stand in solidarity with other groups on our campus who are impacted disproportionately by violence including communities of color, women, individuals living with
disabilities and members of the LGBTQIA community. Accordingly, we join with our esteemed colleagues in other disciplines on campus and with the scientific community at large in strongly opposing the presence of guns on the UT campus. Continue reading School of Social Work Statement on Campus Carry
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