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Contact: media@gunfreeut.org
Download PDF: Gun-Free UT Holding Teach-In announcement

GUN-FREE UT HOSTING TEACH-IN ON CAMPUS CARRY AT UT-AUSTIN

AUSTIN, TX, January 20, 2016 — As 2016 kicks off with more private universities rejecting campus carry, Gun-Free UT has decided to start the new semester at UT-Austin with a Teach-In this Friday, January 22, from 2-5pm at the Glickman Conference Center, CLA 1.302.B.

Organized by Gun-Free UT, the Teach-In will cover the multitude of issues around this controversial law and offer relevant insight, if not answers, to such questions as: What is Campus Carry? How will Campus Carry affect you & your friends? Will guns make you safer or less safe? How can you defend yourself without guns?
“This Teach-In is a phenomenal multi-disciplinary event that will bring together great minds from across the University to ask challenging questions and further assert UT-Austin’s historical role as the epicenter of the movement against guns on campus,” says Ellen Spiro, professor of Radio-TV-Film and an Emmy-winning filmmaker. “Guns serve no purpose on campus other than to intimidate. Gun-Free UT is committed to amplifying the voices of our community and to not be silent in the face of the injustice of Campus Carry. Guns and education do not mix.”

A number of esteemed UT-Austin academics, whose expertise runs the gamut from gun- control issues and psychology to women’s self-defense and African studies, will be part of the Teach-In, including Matt Valentine, Plan II coordinator and contributor to The Atlantic, Salon and other publications; Cole Hutchison, associate professor of English and member of the Campus Carry Working Group; Kevin Foster, associate professor of African & African Diaspora Studies; Becky Bigler, professor of pyschology and director of the Child Research Lab; George Schorn, author of Smile at Strangers and an expert on women’s self-defense; Kate Catterall, associate professor of design and teacher of a course on Campus Carry & Design; and Yasmiyn Irizarry, assistant professor of African & African Diaspora Studies. Also participating is Danielle Vabner, a UT undergraduate and sister of Noah Vabner, who was killed in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012.

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Gun-Free UT is a broad coalition of faculty, students, staff, parents and alumni opposed to allowing guns in campus buildings. Since its founding in August 2015, Gun-Free UT has become a statewide movement, garnering national and international attention. Thousands at UT campuses from El Paso to the Rio Grande Valley to Tyler have joined in the fight to keep concealed firearms out of dorms, classrooms and offices. For more information on Gun- FreeUT’s legal position, click here.