Ohio University Graduate Student Senate approved a stance that calls for the Board of Trustees to leave the current campus weapons policy as is and take no action regarding recent concealed carry legislation.
The senate plans to send the official stance on Senate Bill 199, a bill that could allow
The official stance was created based on comments made by graduate students at an open forum earlier this month and in a Facebook post.
Graduate students who are international students, victims of sexual assault, students of color and LGBTQ students were all represented in the official stance. It also represented the concerns of graduate students who are teaching assistants and who have concealed carry weapons permits already.
“I think that this does a really good job of making a pretty strong statement and shows a diverse reasoning about why graduate students would and would not want (concealed carry) on campus,”
Some GSS members were concerned about having concealed carry weapons in the classroom. Ali
Since there is not a policy like that in place at the university, Alex Burke, vice president of finance, told the body to begin thinking about policies they would like to consider if the Board of Trustees were to allow concealed carry weapons on campus.
“If you’re uncomfortable with this, maybe there’s ways we can develop a policy on campus that’s a little more middle ground,” Burke said.
Additionally, GSS voted to approve the election application to run for executive positions and for senator positions, which is different than the one that was used in previous years. The new form is similar to the one Student Senate used during its elections, Jivanto van Hemert, GSS Board of Elections chair, said.
GSS voted to appoint five new members and approved two budget requests. It also voted to allow budget requests to be submitted electronically. One of the benefits of electronic submission is that GSS will now have the ability to keep a record of the requests, Burke said.
“As a body that has trouble sometimes with institutional memory, I think it’s good that we are going to have more ways to keep track,” Chris Glick, political science department representative, said.
In addition to voting on those resolutions, GSS voted to table a resolution to give support to a policy that would make it easier for graduate students to change their advisers if needed.
