HOUSTON, TEXAS — The University of Houston is going completely the wrong direction in terms of advising its faculty to “drop” certain conversation topics in their curriculum. Ostensibly, this is because it is now legal for students and faculty to carry concealed firearms on campus. The real reason is that the despite the ban on concealed carry on campus being lifted, administrators and educators don’t want to educate themselves on what it means to be a law abiding concealed carrier.
Limiting the conversation that takes place at colleges and universities is dumb. The Houston Chronicle wrote up a very interesting article where they explore how the University of Houston is advising its faculty to censor themselves for fear of reprisals from a newly armed campus. This isn’t how concealed carry works. If educators and administrators educated themselves on precisely what it means to be directly responsible for your own safety, this wouldn’t be an issue. Instead of handling the reality that some of their students will now have a legal right to protect themselves on campus, they’re choosing to act like little children instead.
via the Houston Chronicle
“The diverse academic communities and free academic discourse are especially threatened by the presence of deadly weapons in teaching, research and living spaces.”
University of Houston faculty resolution
Classic “Ivory Tower Syndrome”.
All we can say to this is we truly feel bad for those paying literally tens of thousands of dollars a year to attend an institution of higher learning only to find out their faculty doesn’t have a clue on how the real world works. It’s simple: deadly weapons already exist. It’s not some Pandora’s Box — they’ve already been engineered, invented, and distributed. Instead of waiting to be the next victim, you can now legally choose to protect yourself and your colleagues from harm. That’s a real world decision.
Instead, UH faculty are going to trim their curriculum and make woefully ignorant remarks about how being able to protect themselves is now somehow a threat. Good. I would also suggest people stop attending those classes or paying the ridiculous sums of money necessary to participate in a school that thinks so low of their own faculty and students as to attempt to shame them out of their legal rights.
It’s a reality that academia just don’t want to acknowledge: guns will exist regardless of whether or not you allow them. You might as well have the law abiding type carrying them versus just those who have no regard for safety or the law.