Faculty Senate passed a resolution Monday night that states the senate is against allowing concealed carry on campus.
The executive committee’s statement on the recently-passed Senate Bill 199 urges the Ohio University Board of Trustees not to change the campus weapons policy.
“When we were thinking about crafting this resolution, there was discussion about whether or not we wanted to talk about students and the safety of students,” Faculty Senate Chair Joe McLaughlin said. “There was discussion about the fact that this is a potential policy that would protect staff as well. We decided since there’s other senates on campus ... we wanted to focus this resolution on the issue of academic freedom.”
Debate centered around whether having guns on campus makes violent situations safer. Within the resolution, an amendment was made to encompass the entirety of OU’s campuses, instead of solely addressing instructional spaces and faculty offices.
The potential policy change could also affect students because faculty could carry weapons and that could come across as intimidating to students, Dean of Students Jenny Hall-Jones said.
The OU administration is collecting information for the Board of Trustees to evaluate during the board’s January meeting, McLaughlin said.
“Prior to the bill being signed into law … (OU President Roderick McDavis and Vice Provost Benoit) imagined that if it was signed into law, they would be having conversation with trustees about how they wanted to proceed and find out through the trustees what kind of information (the trustees) want,” McLaughlin said. “I don’t think they really have any clear agenda on how to proceed until they hear from the board what the board wants them to find out or if the board even wants to take up this matter.”
After that resolution passed with one opposing vote, Loren Lybarger, an associate professor of classics and world religions, presented a faculty-initiated proposal to change OU’s harassment policy and offer support to immigrants in light of President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric against immigrants and minorities.
“(The petition) came from a spontaneous response from what are now approximately 80 faculty who have come together to form what we call a rapid response network,” Lybarger said.
Debate about the four-part petition centered on legal concerns of assigning an office to counsel students, faculty and staff in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
DACA offers immigrants delayed deportation if they arrived in the United States as minors, that also allows them to attend school and become employed.
After lengthy discussion, Faculty Senate split the petition into four parts to vote on. Most members of Faculty Senate supported adding “immigration status” to the harassment policy and reaffirming the protection of immigrants’ privacy in accordance with OU policy.
Senate members discussed the university’s legal ability and role to assist DACA students on legal rights and immigration situations.
“I’m not comfortable with that vagueness of saying to assign it an office somewhere,” Ben Bates, chair of the Promotion and Tenure Committee, said.
Bates said that the university’s administrative offices, such as the Office of Legal Affairs, aren’t suited to address the specific issues DACA students have.
Because the petition was broken up, petitioners Lybarger and Paul Patton, a faculty senator and assistant professor of anthropology and food studies, will return to their faculty network to continue to discuss the proposal.
