Congratulations on being unanimously approved by the Board of Trustees as Auburn University`s 19th president.
We are excited to welcome you into the Auburn Family and onto our beautiful campus.
We are also excited for your desire to hear from students on how to make Auburn the best it can be.
We also want to commend your successful and courageous efforts to protect students from violence on Iowa State's campus.
You followed your conscience and prioritized student safety over all else. In order for a campus to foster learning, it must, above all, be a safe environment for students, staff and visitors.
In order to make Auburn University a safer place, we, the 500 students of Auburn University Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, urge you to bring before the Board of Trustees the following concern: We wish for the University's policy barring weapons, specifically firearms, from campus to be rescinded.
While a ban on weapons might seem to promise a safe learning environment, incidents of mass violence on gun-free campuses in the recent and not-so-recent past demonstrate that this is not true.
Tragedies like those that took place at Columbine High School, Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook Elementary simply do not happen on campuses that allow qualified students and faculty to be armed.
Consider that on July 20, 2012, a man murdered 12 people and wounded 58 more in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, where guns were banned — other movie theaters closer to his residence or with larger crowds allowed guns.
We are not seeking to do the job of our excellent police force. It is merely our hope that the common knowledge that there may be armed, law-abiding persons on campus will deter crime.
Congratulations once again and thank you for your kind consideration.
Auburn University Students for Concealed Carry is a gun rights advocacy organization on campus.
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