By: Concerned Ohio Citizen

Concerned Ohio Citizen
Sat, 17 Dec 2016 03:48:56 +0000

There are so many things wrong with this letter, where to begin....lets start with the truth. "We write this letter to express the widespread outrage over the university’s recent decision to allow a group of primarily non-student individuals to carry assault rifles on our campus last week." 1) Alert Oxford's Dictionary that the definition of "widespread" has been changed to mean "just a few people". If you check the facebook event page for the open carry demonstration walk that is still up you will find videos posted by the attendees whom were nice enough to record their conversations with students, many of whom expressed gratitude and support for the demonstration and the attendees. 2) Assault rifles are defined as any firearm that expends multiple rounds with one trigger pull. The firearms carried by all of the attendees at the demonstration were semi-automatic rifles which means that only one round is expended for each pull of the trigger. Further the term "assault rifle" is a term that describes an action being used with the object. Since no one was "assaulted" then this term is invalid. Even further some of the firearms displayed in photos by the attendees were single shot hunting rifles or pistols. "The event required no special permission from the university — a significant issue on its own" 1) Since the University is a public domain it is subject to abide by the laws set forth by the State of Ohio and the United States Federal government both of which protect a citizens constitutional right openly carry a firearm. They cannot prevent this even if they wanted to as it would be a violation of a persons constitutional rights. "As educators, we do not believe the administration has shown it supports our stated university mission “to advance the well-being of the people of Ohio and the global community through the creation and dissemination of knowledge.”" 1) This is exactly what the university was doing in this case allowing the demonstration to take place in order for students to be exposed to differing points of view and challenge their assumptions in order to create dialogue and promote deeper thinking. 2)Just because you don't agree with the demonstration does not give you the right to determine which points of view are "safe" for students to be exposed to or which ones are allowed. Your argument seems to paint a perception of you wanting to control what your students are exposed to and what kinds of "knowledge" are correct from your perspective. What exactly are you afraid of? That they might form thoughts and opinions of their own vs what you tell them to think and feel?...... "Bringing visible, violent machinery onto campus this week is absolutely not in accordance with the University’s mission to promote learning first and foremost." 1) If you recall, the terrorist who attacked your school brought "visible and violent machinery" onto your campus in the form of a vehicle and knife. By your logic then anything that could be defined as "potentially violent machinery" is something that should be banned on campus. 2) If the Universities mission is to "promote learning first and foremost" than any opportunity for students to be challenged and exposed to differing viewpoints should be welcomed and embraced in order to provide ways for them to grow. "If these radical demonstrators truly care about educating and facilitating dialogue, they can table on the Oval or hold an open forum without guns present." 1) Considering that nothing violent occurred from the demonstration I would be unfair to call the demonstrators as "radicals" especially since, according to recent polling, support for gun control has dropped to 46 percent while support for gun rights has jumped 52 percent, the highest ever in the past 25 years according to Pew Research Center polling from this past year. On the contrary they actually represent the majority of american citizens. 2) Be honest, would any of you actually attend an open forum to discuss gun rights if we did decided to hold it? And if you did, would you be open to differing points of view?......My gut tells me you would not. "However, the OSU administration still thinks it is appropriate to 1) allow these large guns on campus in broad daylight and 2) not warn the OSU community at large that they would be right outside academic buildings. Moreover, the administration allowed this to occur just a week after members of this community thought a shooter was attacking the campus. At best, the message that OSU is sending about the use of guns on campus is confusing." 1) Students and faculty alike were dully informed of the demonstration via email and public notice boards. Read your email and stop making up false claims. "It is an affront to the students and staff of color on this campus for the university to so brazenly highlight the racial double standard at play in this state, by not only welcoming a group of white activists with deadly weapons to our campus, but providing them University Police security, while. elsewhere in the state, people of different races are killed for the possession of weapons in places where such possession is not even banned, as it is on this campus." 1) And here is where you took the hard left turn and made this about race. You should have stuck with your original argument. Now i cant even tell what your ultimate goal is? Is it student safety? Is it that you are upset with University policies? Or is this now about race relations and painting gun rights activists as "white supremacists"? 2)Again, I would like to point you to the actual pictures, articles, and videos posted BY THE DEMONSTRATORS THEMSELVES that actually shows that many of them were of differing races and they even engaged a group of high school students whom were a very diverse group of individuals led by a lovely teacher who encouraged them to engage in discourse with the demonstrators in order to learn about why they were there and form their own opinions. Seems like the high school teacher had much more sense than this group of professors. "In addition, the OSU student code of conduct states in item (B) that “threatening action that endangers the safety, physical or mental health, or life of any person, or creates a reasonable fear of such action” is prohibited. It is safe to say that the action of the open-carry demonstration very well could endanger the mental health of all OSU community members and certainly could create reasonable fear." FINAL: Whether you "are" safe and whether you "feel" safe are too completely different things. Additionally that is from your "student" code of conduct. You already stated that all the demonstrators were not students of your university. So they do not have to abide by your code of conduct. Further a code of conduct is simply that, a code. It is not law. As I stated earlier, the rights afforded to the demonstrators by the US and Ohio State constitution trump your "code of conduct". As of the most recent data 2014, there are over 11 million concealed carry license holders across the US. If we were a problem, you would know it.