​​​​​​​​​Arthur P. Meister

Guns In Schools

The push to allow college students to carry guns on campus is wrong.   School shootings are an important concern, but most colleges are dealing with it responsibly.  Heightened faculty and student body awareness, improved campus communication, escape and lock down training and other measures lessen the potential damage from such an event.  However, armed students add a frightening new dimension that could change forever the most important part of academic life – the openness, propriety, and harmony necessary for the free exchange of ideas and knowledge.


The presumption one is armed could significantly shift scholarly orientation and everyone’s way of interacting.  Professors assuming the student they are critiquing, grading, or counseling is armed could change the very nature of what should be an open, honest, and beneficial interaction.  Show a gun in any group setting and watch it chill and alarm the observers.   Campus security will face the potential for armed confrontation with students.

 
Throw in student exuberance for living on their own in close quarters for the first time, pledging and hazing, raucous partying, heart ache and jealously from newfound or failed relationships, debating emotional issues, political or social activism, even disciplining etc., then guns should never be part of the mix.  The proposed solution to a fear may be more dangerous than the actual threat.