Abstract
According to the recent
news Texas Tech University (TTU) is going to enact the Campus Carry law on Sep.
1, 2016. This law gives the permission to TTU members to carry concealed
licensed guns on campus. There were some debates whether this law would make
the university safer or not. The supporters believed that it could be helpful
in case of mass shooting incidents or assaults to carry guns, while others
opposed. The opponents brought up reasons such as immaturity of young students
who might be involved with alcohol, higher risk of hurting innocent people in
mass shooting incidents with more armed people, and also the possibility of using
victims’ guns against them in case of assaults. In order to investigate TTU
members’ perception of Campus Carry law, we conducted a survey among 148 people
in TTU. The results were statistically evaluated in an Excel file and used to
examine the correctness of the hypotheses we made about public perception of
this law. Overall, more than half of the participants in the survey believed
that campus carry would decrease the university’s safety.
Key words: Campus Carry
law, Texas Tech University, guns- Soraya Honarparvar
Introduction
The
Texas Legislature passed the Campus Carry Bill recently, and Texas Tech
University (TTU) is going to enact this law on Sep. 1, 2016. According to this law,
concealed licensed weapons will be allowed in campus areas and colleges. There
are some difficulties in implementing this law at TTU, which the Tech System committee
is trying to solve by preparing a list of guidelines and principles (Micheal,
2015). However, there were some controversies and debates on this law and its
effects on academic life on campus. The main challenge surrounding the
concealed licensed gun on campus was the safety issue.
Some
nationwide mass shooting incidents such as Columbine High School, Virginia Tech
University and Fort Hood occurred in gun-free zones, which led to the support
of the Campus Carry law by a group of people (Pratt, 2012). In addition, some
sexual assault victims claimed that having guns could make them able to protect
themselves in the case of attack (Hawkins, 2015).
In
opposition to some arguments that carrying concealed licensed gun would
decrease the number of physical attacks and mass shootings, some believed that
if we armed young students who could be involved in alcohol, it might increase
the number of crimes on campus (Kaufman, 2015). Furthermore, more guns could
result in more innocent people’s death in the case of mass shooting. In some
cases, more armed people on campus might cause a stressful environment in the
case of any types of interaction at a university, which could destroy the
peaceful academic life.
All
these controversies on campus carry made this subject appealing for people in
the Advanced Writing class for graduate students at TTU. Therefore, ten
students and also the instructor, Mr. Thomas Leverett, and his Teaching
Assistant, chose to do more research on people’s perception of this law at TTU.
The concept was to understand what percentage of TTU people agreed with this law
and how many of them disagreed with it, and what their main reasons were. We
read different articles to know more about the various challenges with campus
carry. In order to find out what the public opinion on those issues was, we
made a survey. Considering that TTU had a student population of about 35,000
and 10 colleges, we tried to categorize survey participants by asking questions
about their gender, nation, political parties which they support, and also
their role at TTU (undergraduate, graduate, faculty/staff). These factors could
identify people’s idea on guns. For instance, Republicans generally favored
carrying guns; therefore, it might affect their answers to the questions in the
survey. We tried to provide various questions on different aspects of the campus
carry law to see how people in different categories would respond to those
questions. The results were provided and fully discussed in the following
sections.
Literature
Review
According
to the Campus Carry law which is going to be implemented at Texas Tech
University (TTU) from Sep. 1, 2016, people will be allowed to carry concealed
licensed guns on most parts of the campus except the places which are
restricted by the Tech System committee. Regarding safety, some people found
this law disputable.
Further,
a poll result showed that 75% of American citizens support the law which gave
permission to enable citizens to get concealed licensed guns (Blannelberry, 2012). Furthermore,
in another survey done by Gallup, the result demonstrated that the idea of
improving safety by owning a gun in the house was developing (McCarthy, 2014).
Also the poll showed that Republicans and independents were more in favor of
guns compared to Democrats.
In
the case of carrying licensed gun on campus, a group of supporters stated that
mass shootings happened in gun free zones, such as the Virginia Tech incident
(Metzger, 2015). They also believed, if mass shooting happens, innocent people
should be armed to be able to defend themselves from murderers (Welsh, 2012).
However,
the opponents of this law believed that campus carry would make the
university’s environment unsafe for many reasons. Accidental shootings might
increase, and also unstable young students could shoot people intentionally if
they got angry (Cattanach, 2015). Furthermore, alcohol drinking could be
another reason for misusing guns by young students which might lead to more
shooting accidents (Simsen and Humphrey, 2015). Also, students who were mostly
younger than 30 years old, psychologically were not mature enough to handle
guns (Morgan, 2015). These were some of the reasons that made opponents believe
that guns would endanger the universities’ safety.
Furthermore,
a survey result showed that about 90% of faculty and 80% of students believed
that guns would decrease universities’ safety (Kaufman, 2015). In addition,
some stated that the idea of struggling with an armed student, might cause
stress and anxiety in a professor in any types of interactions with students
(Clark, 2015).
In
the case of sexual assault, the opponents of this law believed that more guns
on campus could result in more murdered women (Reindl and Cocco, 2015). The
guns which were supposed to help women, could be grabbed by attackers and
applied against the victims (Kaufman, 2015).
Based on the information
we gathered, we made some hypotheses on people’s perception of Campus Carry Law.
Hypotheses
- Since the majority of Texans are
Republicans, Some of us supposed that the majority of participants in the
survey who were TTU members would be Republicans.
- Since the poll result
showed that Republicans were more in favor of guns, we guessed that
participants of the survey who were Republicans would support Campus Carry more
than Democrats.
- Based on the
information about faculty’s concerns and anxiousness surrounding more armed
students, we predicted that faculty would believe that campus safety would
decrease after enacting the Campus Carry law.
- Based on what we read
about shooting accidents in other universities, some of us suspected that since
Campus Carry would increase the number of armed people, therefore, most of the
participants would believe that enacting this law might decrease the
university’s safety.
- Since most of the young
students tend to be involved with alcohol, some of us predicted that most of
the participants would not like their young friends carrying guns on
campus.
- Furthermore, since some
women believe that they could protect themselves better by carrying guns in the
case of sexual assault, some of us suspected that women would think that they might
be safer if they carried guns.
- Since people who own
guns believe it makes them safer, I suspected if they were allowed, they would
carry their gun on campus too.
The survey results demonstrated whether our
hypotheses were correct or not.
Method
Our
concern in this project was about understanding the people’s reaction to the Campus
Carry law, which is going to be enacted in Texas Tech University (TTU) on Sept.1.
During our investigation among the articles related to the subject, we found
out that various factors could affect one’s idea regarding this law. For
example, people who grew up in small towns where there were guns in each family
to go hunting, might react differently to this law compared to ones who grew up
in a culture in which using guns was rare. Moreover, Republicans generally were
more likely to support guns compared to Democrats. However, women might think
that they needed extra protection such as guns in case of any types of assaults.
Respectfully we can say that age, gender, political points of view, place and the
culture which people have been growing up in, and so many other different facts
could make an impression on people’s beliefs surrounding carrying guns on
campus.
People
who were spending most of their days on campus such as students, faculty and
staff or any other employee and TTU members, were actually the ones challenging
the consequences of this law. Therefore we decided to do a survey among TTU
members to study their feedback on the law and what they thought about the
impacts of this law on their safety on campus. We studied various articles,
discussed the subject in the group, and finally made our questionnaire. Our
question sheet involved 25 multiple-choice questions, and also there was one
question which asked participants to write down their opinion (Appendix A). The
first few questions (1-9) were designed to give us a background of the
participants (Age, American/International, hometown, supporting political
party, role at TTU, gun experiences, smoking habit). The rest of the questions
would support the hypotheses that were made in class regarding various aspects
and how several types of people would take sides on them. By focusing on the
answer for some questions, everybody could confirm or reject their prediction
in the hypotheses. In order to make reliable results, we tried to ask an equal
number of males and females at different parts of the campus to do the survey. The
equality of males and females was essential for developing and discussing the
results of some questions. Therefore, each member in the class, including the
students, professor and teaching assistant was supposed to ask at least 12 TTU
members to do the survey. Finally, filled questionnaires were gathered by the
professor and distributed among the students in order to enter the answers of
questions in an Excel file. In the process of completing the Excel file, the
question sheets which were not completely filled (more than one or two
questions were not been answered by the respondents) were eliminated in order
to have an almost even number of responses for all questions. Totally, 148
participants did the survey completely. The statistical calculation such as summing
up the number of people who chose specific answers for each question and
calculating the percentages’ distribution, was done on the Excel sheet. In
order to investigate different hypotheses, the answers of some questions were
correlated to other questions’ responses. For example, regarding women’s
attitude with respect to guns and safety, the answer of questions 1 and 17 were
correlated and investigated. Finally, each student chose separate questions and
scrutinized their hypotheses based on the statistical analysis of those
questions.
However, in the
case of this paper, question number 5 would determine the percentage of the
different political group supporters (Republican, Democrat, independent, etc.)
among the participants which could demonstrate the correctness of my first
hypothesis. Further, I believed that how the respondents answered question
number 25 would determine if they thought Campus Carry law would make the
university safer. Therefore, by statistically investigating how different
political group supporters answered this question, I was able to scrutinize the
claim I made in my second hypothesis. Regarding the third hypothesis, I
believed question 25 would describe faculty’s idea on university safety changes
by Campus Carry Law. Therefore, I investigated what percentages of faculty
agree with statement in question 25 and how many disagreed with that to confirm
that hypothesis. Overall, question number 15 was about people’s opinion on campus
safety in the case of mass shooting with having more armed people at university.
Also question 21 was about substituting guns with tasers. Considering the fact
that one of the safety hazards in university was mass shooting I believed that
the answer of question 15 would reveal people’s perception of the relationship
between more guns and campus safety. Also, the fact that people might be
willing to use tasers instead of guns can be another proof that they did not
believe gun carry would increase campus safety. Therefore, I chose these two
questions in order to investigate my fourth hypothesis. However, questions
number 22 and 24 would reflect the participant’s idea on carrying guns by young
students which could be their classmates or friends. Since the statistical investigation
of those questions would clarify my fifth hypothesis. The connection between
women’s safety and carrying guns can be recognized in question 17. Therefore,
in order to examine my sixth hypothesis, I evaluate women’s answer to this
question. Further, to clarify my last hypothesis, I tried to correlate the
answer of questions 8 and 12; since question 8 demonstrated what the
percentages of gun owners was, and question 12 identified the probability of
carrying guns on campus. Therefore, if I found out how the gun owners (question
8) answered question 12, I could examine the concepts of my last hypothesis.
Results
As I mentioned in my first hypothesis, we predicted that the
majority of participants were going to be Republican, similar to most Texans. However,
results of question 5 in the survey demonstrated that only 35% of the
respondents were Republicans. Although the Democrats had a smaller portion,
20%, the rest of the people were not Republicans either. 39% of the respondents
identified themselves as independents (Appendix B, Chart 1).
In the next hypothesis, we supposed that most of the Republicans
would support the Campus Carry law. The survey results showed that similar to
what we thought, 76% of Republicans believed that Concealed Licensed guns would
make the university safer (Appendix B, Chart 2). However, 90% of Democrats had
the opposite view, and they believed Campus Carry would not increase the
university’s safety (Appendix B, Chart 3). For independents, the percentage of
people who supported the Campus Carry law was 73%, which was higher than Democrats,
but a little bit lower than Republicans (Appendix B, Chart 4).
Regarding our third Hypothesis, we suspected faculty would be less
likely to support Campus Carry. The survey results completely supported our
opinion. 100% of faculty believed that Campus Carry would not increase the
university safety (Appendix B, Chart 5). However, this conclusion might not be
quite reliable, since only 3% of respondents were faculty (Appendix B, Chart
6). Therefore, our sample might not include various points of view.
In our fourth hypothesis, we claimed that the majority of
participants were more likely to believe that the Campus Carry law would
decrease the university safety. The results distinguished that 51% of respondents
believed that more guns on Campus would decrease the safety in the case of a
mass shooting, and 45% of them had the opposite opinion. Therefore, in this
case, there was no huge difference between the supporters and opponents. On the
other hand 71% of respondents believed that tasers could be substitutions for
guns. As a conclusion we can mention that even though the difference was
insignificant, still people believed that having more guns on campus would not
increase their safety and they preferred to carry other self-protection devices
rather than guns (Appendix B, Charts 7 and 8).
In the fifth hypothesis, we stated that participants might not like
the idea of their friends carrying guns. Results indicated that 49% of respondents
preferred that their friends not carry a gun. Furthermore, 24% of them had no
feelings about it and only 27% of the participants in the survey liked the idea
of guns being carried by their friends. These results confirmed our theory
regarding people’s feeling on carrying a gun by a friend. Further, regarding
carrying a gun by a classmate, 34% believed that they would feel more nervous,
11% announced that they might be suspicious, and 11% stated that they would
feel in danger and unable to concentrate. Therefore, 56% totally did not feel
comfortable about the idea of a gun being carried to the class by a student.
24% believed that it would not bother them and only 10% of them felt safer in
this condition. Therefore, the overall answer of this question would confirm
the fact that participants did not like the idea of carrying a gun to a class
or any other places on campus (Appendix B, Charts 9 and 10).
In our sixth hypothesis, we suspected that women would believe that
they would be safer if they carried guns. The survey results showed that among
49% of female participants in the survey, 51% believed that carrying guns would
increase their safety and 49% believed they would not. The difference between
the opponents and supporters was not huge enough to approve our theory completely;
however, even this slight leaning toward supporting side can show the
correctness of the general idea (Appendix B, Chart 11).
In our last hypothesis, we suspected that people who owned guns
were likely to carry them on campus. The results demonstrated that 65% of gun
owners would bring their guns on Campus if they were allowed to. Therefore, our
hypothesis proved to be correct (Appendix B, Chart 12).
Discussion
In the first hypothesis, we suspected that most of the participants
in the study would be Republicans, however, results did not support our idea.
Only 35% of people who did the survey were Republicans, although 20% claimed to
be Democrats, but 39% identified themselves as independents. This reflects the
fact that most of the participants could not introduce themselves only by these
two political groups. It means that they were not be able to support the whole
philosophy and ideas of either of these two parties, and that is why they
defined themselves as independents. However, it worth noticing that the
majority of participants in this study (67%) are undergraduate young students.
Therefore, our results could mostly represent their opinions about political
parties. The lack of experience and in some case knowledge surrounding political
views of these parties, could be the reason for choosing independent as a safer
option by these young students. Moreover, I believe if we had fair distribution
of participants with respect to their age, the final result might be closer to
our prediction in the hypothesis, or at least it could provide a more reliable
conclusion at the end, since it is likely that older people are more familiar
with these parties’ political views and they choose to support one of them.
In our second hypothesis, we were curious to know if Republicans were
more likely to support Campus Carry Law or not. The survey results confirmed
our opinion. Totally, 76% of Republicans were supporting the Campus Carry law.
Generally, Republicans were more in favor of guns and they were more likely to
believe that having guns would increase their safety. Therefore, in this study
we found out that they had the same idea regarding guns even on campus, and
they believed people could protect themselves better if they carried guns at
university. It was interesting to know that independents had the same view as
Republicans, 73% of them were supporting campus carry. Although considering the
fact that majority of these Republicans and independents who did the survey were
young students, the results could not completely represent the older
Republicans’ and independents’ preferences regarding guns on campus.
In the third hypothesis, we suspected that faculty would be less
likely to support the Campus Carry law. The results were in the same direction,
and 100% of faculty did not support Campus Carry law. The fact that faculty
were more involved in interaction with young students who might be unsatisfied
with their grades or courses, could cause their anxiety regarding Campus Carry.
The results illustrated their stress regarding young immature students who
could be armed and they might not be in control of their tempers. However, our
knowledge was not completed for this conclusion since only 3% of respondents
were faculty. I believed if more faculty participated in the study, we would
reach the same results. In order to confirm this hypothesis, in future studies,
there should be an even distribution of participants regarding people’s role at
university. In this way, we will know if the faculty are more stressed by this law
or not, and we even can make a comparison between their idea and other
people’s. Further, I believe in order to be more accurate in discussion, we
should investigate faculty’s idea with respect to their age, since older
faculty have more experiences with students than younger ones, therefore, their
opinions may be more trustworthy with respect to students behaviors.
In the fourth hypothesis, we claimed that the majority of
respondents would believe that enacting this law would decrease the
university’s safety. As results demonstrated, people had feelings that in the
case of mass shooting they would be less safe with more guns around them, and
they were willing to substitute guns with other protecting devices. Overall, 51%
of participants believed campus carry would decrease their safety in the case
of mass shooting. However, mass shooting incidents in other universities, which
were in gun free zones, might raise the idea that carrying a gun would help
people to protect themselves. This might be the reason that 45% of respondents
still believed that concealed licensed guns would increase their safety in such
a situation. However, choosing a taser instead of a gun with 71% of respondents
demonstrated the fact that people were more worried about their safety rather
than being in favor of carrying guns. However, in future studies, we can ask
respondents about their ideas on the relationship between higher number of
armed people on campus and the frequency of mass shooting. In this way, we can
find out whether they really see guns as a solution or as a source of problems.
In the fifth idea, we suspected that people would not favor the
idea of their friends’ carrying guns. We found the same direction in the
results; 49% of respondents preferred that their friends not carry guns, while
24% had no feelings regarding that and 27% liked the idea. The same pattern
happened regarding people’s feeling about their classmates’ carrying guns. 56%
were not comfortable about carrying guns by their classmates. Higher
interactions and competitions in class and among students might lead to these
results, since they know having more guns would make all those situations more
dangerous. In our further investigation, we can ask people if they think there
should be extra locker rooms in order to keep the guns out of classes, and also
how the university should manage the extra fiscal cost of locker rooms. Since these extra costs can make enacting
Campus Carry Law expensive, we can ask respondents if they are willing to pay
more tuition fees or taxes in order to solve the cost issue related to those
locker rooms.
In our sixth hypothesis, we predicted that women would believe they
might be safer with carrying guns on campus. Results showed the same idea. 51%
of women believed that they were safer with carrying guns. Since normally women
are more victims of sexual assaults, it is reasonable that they believed with
guns they might be safer. However, in future research we should ask women if
they feel safer with more armed men around them, because Campus Carry is arming
both men and women. Now the question is whether an armed woman is safer in
front of an armed man or not? In addition we can ask them about the impact of
Campus Carry Law on the number of assaults against women and whether these will
increase it or not.
In our last hypothesis, we believed that people who owned guns
would bring their guns on campus if they were allowed to do so. The results
confirmed our idea, and 65% of gun owners claimed they would bring their guns
on campus if it was legal. This sounded like a reasonable result, since there
was no other process such as background check or buying guns for people who
already had guns; therefore, they would carry them on campus as well. However,
in future research we should ask them whether they think it is necessary to
carry guns on campus or they may carry it because they used to carrying it in
most places.
Conclusion
There
were some controversies surrounding the Campus Carry Law which allowed licensed
guns on the TTU campus. Some believed that this law would make the campus safer
in case of assaults and also mass shootings, while the others strongly
disagreed. The opponents of this law claimed that carrying guns on campus not
only would not increase the university’s safety, but also it would damage the
academic life. In order to investigate the TTU members’ opinion on this law we
did a survey which contained 26 multiple choice questions. 148 people roughly
(half males and half females) participated in the survey. The statistical
analyzing of the results have been used to discuss various hypotheses of this
study. The results revealed that majority of respondents were Republicans and
independents, whereas Democrats had a smaller portion. Also Republicans and
independents mostly supported Campus Carry Law, while most of the Democrats had
opposite points of view. Moreover, all of the faculty who participated in the
survey believed that this law would decrease the university’s safety. Further, more
than half of the respondents believed that more guns would decrease the
university’s safety in the case of mass shooting and a majority of them were
willing to substitute tasers with guns. Moreover, they mostly stated that they
would feel less safe if their classmates or friend carried guns. However, more
than half of the women believed carrying guns would increase their safety. Also
we found out that the majority of gun owners claimed they would bring their
guns on campus if they had the permission. One general finding of this study showed
that people might believe carrying guns on campus would increase their safety,
but they did not like the idea of other people having weapons at a university.
However, it is
worth to mentioning that our samples size might not represent TTU perfectly and
to achieve more reliable results, a larger group of respondents should be
investigated. Further, in order to make a better comparison for most of the
questions, we should have an even distribution of participants with respect to
various factors such as age and role at TTU.
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Appendix B: Charts
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