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.
Dean Almy, Associate Professor
Anthony Alofsin, Professor
Kevin Alter, Professor
Simon Atkinson, Professor
Michael Benedikt, Professor
Miroslava Benes, Associate Professor
Kory Bieg, Assistant Professor
Judith Birdsong, Lecturer
Danelle Briscoe, Assistant Professor
Richard Cleary, Professor
Coleman Coker, Adjunct Professor
Ulrich Dangel, Associate Professor
Elizabeth Danze, Professor
Charles di Piazza, Lecturer
Gabriel Diaz Montemayor, Assistant Professor
Larry Doll, Associate Professor
Nerea Feliz, Assistant Professor
Frances Gale, Conservation Scientist
Sarah Gamble, Lecturer
Allison Gaskins, Lecturer
Tamie Glass, Associate Professor
Francisco Gomes, Associate Professor
David Heymann, Professor
Michael Holleran, Associate Professor
Benjamin Ibarra Sevilla, Assistant Professor
Richard Jennings, Adjunct Professor
Junfeng Jiao, Assistant Professor
Brian Kelsey, Lecturer
Nancy Kwallek, Professor Emerita
Fernando Lara, Associate Professor
Charlton Lewis, Lecturer
Petra Liedl, Assistant Professor
Katherine Lieberknecht, Lecturer
Christopher Long, Professor
Sarah Lopez, Assistant Professor
Juan Miro, Professor
Steven Moore, Professor
Elizabeth Mueller, Associate Professor
Guy C. Naeve, Adjunct Professor
Michael Oden, Associate Professor
Clay Odom, Assistant Professor
Robert Paterson, Associate Professor
Rachael Rawlins, Senior Lecturer
Susan Rieff, Research Fellow
Sandra Rosenbloom, Research Professor
Stephen Ross, Senior Lecturer
Joyce Rossner, Senior Lecturer
Allan Shearer, Associate Professor
Igor Siddiqui, Associate Professor
Bjorn Sletto, Associate Professor
Stephen Sonnenberg, Adjunct Professor
Jason Sowell, Associate Professor
Frederick Steiner, Professor
Danilo Udovicki, Associate Professor
Wilfried Wang, Professor
Jake Wegmann, Assistant Professor
Nichole Weidemann, Associate Professor
Patricia Wilson, Professor
Ming Zhang, Associate Professor