Yesterday, the Democratically-controlled Nevada State Senate passed SB 231 by a vote of 15-6. This bill would allow 21 year-old and older individuals to carry concealed weapons on university campuses. The bill now goes to the Assembly. If they pass it I don't know if Sandoval would sign it, but I suspect he would.
A little info on me...I am a junior faculty member at one of the state's 8 higher education institutions. I support the rights of people to have guns. While I don't hunt, I support the right of people to do so. But, the thought of guns in a classroom, or in my office in the department, or in our university speech-language pathology clinic that serves primarily young children and older adults frightens me. Also, given the current budget situation and the additional planned cuts, permitting guns on campus feels like rubbing an entire salt block in an already festering wound. I've pasted the letter I sent to my Assemblycritter below.
Dear Representative XXX,
I am writing as a constituent and as a faculty member of the XXX to ask you to vote 'no' on SB 231, the CCW on Campus bill.
I am asking you to vote no on this bill for several reasons. First and foremost is the safety of all students in my classes. I have already had an incident with a student who became so enraged and behaviorally unstable that the university police and XPD removed her from campus. She was old enough to have had a CCW permit. She was already stressed financially and emotionally that the grade she earned on an exam was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. She was so out of control, the university police sent an undercover police officer to my class for the next lecture. What if she had been carrying a concealed weapon when she entered my office?
Last year, I asked a student to leave a lecture because he was pretending to shoot other students and the floor with his hands in the shape of a gun. This student was a veteran over the age of 21 and was preparing to return overseas. What if he had had a gun in the classroom? He had been trained by our military to use handguns with lethal force.
As a department, we have had to involve the police with an older student who recently graduated. He became fixed on several of the female students and would pursue them even within our speech-language pathology clinic. He would walk up and down the observation hallways which are kept darkened by necessity so that families and supervisors can observe graduate students providing speech-language therapy to clients. He also was a veteran, had access to firearms, and knew how to use them. What if he had brought a gun into the close confines of our clinic?
Many comments on Twitter have called the Senate's passage of SB 231 another unfunded mandate for the university. I completely agree with that assessment. The University has been decimated by severe cuts over the last several years. One of the hardest hit areas has been student services. That includes the student conduct services team. These are the people who used to be much more widely available to faculty and staff when interacting with behaviorally challenging students. Their staff has been decimated. Currently, I do not believe they are in a position to support faculty if students are permitted to carry concealed weapons on campus without the President's permission. Please realize that if you vote 'yes' on this bill you will not allow only students with CCW permits to carry guns on campus. Potentially, members of the community could carry concealed weapons into our Speech-Language Pathology Clinic, the Family Medicine Clinic, the Pharmacy, the Knowledge Center, the Events Center, and football, baseball, and basketball games. There is no need for lay individuals to carry firearms in any of those environments.
Please allow me to remind you that Jared Loughner was able to purchase a handgun and obtain a CCW permit legally in Arizona. I am sure I do not need to remind you what he then did with the legally purchased and concealed handgun.
If this bill passes and is signed into law by the governor, I will certainly change my patterns of behavior. The Second Amendment also guarantees that I have the right to not carry a firearm. Knowing that students may be carrying concealed weapons would mean that I would no longer teach or hold office hours in a room with only one means of egress. Under this scenario, I would no longer be able to meet with students in my office given its physical placement in the building and that the windows do not open. I would not meet with students on campus without at least one other university employee on the premises.
Finally, and on a personal level, I am beginning to question how much more I am willing to tolerate from the State Legislature before I consider leaving the university. I love my job. I love my fellow faculty and the wonderful staff who support us. I thoroughly enjoy working with the students in our department and across the university. I did not spend 11 years studying to obtain my Ph.D. to become rich. I obtained the terminal degree because I wanted to make a larger impact on the field of speech-language pathology than serving the small, finite number of clients on my caseload. I wanted to teach others to become outstanding clinicians and to conduct research primarily in the areas of preschool- and school-age language acquisition. It has become abundantly clear that Nevada places little value on higher education and on public employees in general. We have become the scapegoats for all of the frustration. A lot of this is our fault. Public employees do not advocate for ourselves well; we are too busy. This past year, I have taken the prescribed furlough days on paper and on paper only. You see, I am on a 12-month contract and teach classes year-round. I will be teaching the graduate-level acoustical analysis course beginning the week of June 6th. My students don't get a refund on their tuition because their instructor is on state-mandated furlough. The clients on my caseload are counting on me as well. This summer, I will work with seven graduate clinicians providing therapy to school-age clients from the community as well as work with three additional students on my evaluation team. I also have to conduct research to be able to publish in order to obtain tenure and mentor the students who are conducting their own research projects with me. I am expected to submit and have published at least one manuscript per year. On top of all of this, I also must perform service to the university, the community, and the profession. These activities include sitting on various committees, providing workshops & consultations to other professionals in the community, and reviewing manuscripts and grants for journals and granting agencies. Yet, the health insurance benefits have been decimated to the point that I will return to Planned Parenthood for my routine women's health care. I will seek out the same programs I used for vision and dental insurance as a doctoral student. The amount I will receive in my paycheck beginning on July 1 is entirely under your control. The classes I will teach in the fall and spring will be larger and the struggling students will have many fewer supports available to them. And now, I must contend with the fact that this state is about to allow concealed handguns in my classroom without my input. Let me reiterate - I love my job. But, at some point, I must question how many concessions are too much.
Thank you for your time.