Guns

In the wake of the horrible events at Virginia Tech last school year universities all over the United States are looking for ways to become more safe. The main thing that most are learning is that communication is paramount to the safety of students. The faster the communication, the better. In an age where near every student has a cell phone and every student has an email address (which most check on a clinically obsessive basis) there is no reason for lack of fast communication. Iowa State is looking into a system to communicate with the University community in just such a manner, I applaud this.

What does this have to do with guns other then the act that sparked it? A lot, because the second thing that many universities are looking at (Iowa State, Iowa and Northern Iowa included) is the arming of campus police officers. Iowa State and the other two regent universities in Iowa all have certified, and trained fully fledged police stations. None of the officers at these stations regularly cary firearms.

You can see where I’m going with this now. If you can’t, I’m talking about the arming of these police as a way of making our campus safer. Virginia Tech had armed police officers. Adding guns to a situation doesn’t seem to make it safer to me, any situation. So why are we doing it?

At this point it’s mostly a done deal. Students were able to give feedback and GSB voted 25-5 (or something close to this) to pass a resolution in favor of arming police officers and the Regents are the ones to make the decision now. I’m hoping they don’t do it.