Failure of campus gun bill based on flawed logic

The guns on campus law that recently failed may have raised the crime rate, but that’s only because it would only have allowed guns near campus, not in the hands of their owners, meaning that they could easily be stolen by irresponsible criminals. Allowing guns on campus would not raise campus crime. Having researched this topic thoroughly for an English paper, I’d like to address some erroneous assumptions made about guns on campus.

Assumption #1: College students are too irresponsible to carry weapons on campuses. Some students drink, or smoke, or speed or engage in a dangerous combination of all three. My notebook is green, my roommate’s notebook is green. Does that mean all notebooks are green? This argument is an insult to those who already passed background checks, and weapons testing, which allowed them to carry their weapon in the first place. College campuses are not bubbles which immediately make responsible people who step inside irresponsible.

Assumption #2: Allowing guns on campus would increase campus crime rate. Campus crime rate is already rising. Banning guns on campus has failed to decrease campus crime rates. As I said, college campuses are not “”bubbles of irresponsibility,”” so just because a student has a gun, it doesn’t mean they’ll use it.

Assumption #3: Guns detract from a safe learning environment. The law would allow concealed carry on campus. If a student isn’t intending upon using his gun, then it will most likely remain hidden, and no one need be afraid of it. If someone is intent upon using his gun, then it will not remain concealed long, and it would be a good idea for that person to be gunned down before he shoots thirty people, because campus police cannot be everywhere at once.

I do not believe that we should abandon allowing guns on campus based on false assumptions. Before writing off the idea, let’s take a quick breath and think about the concept’s more realistic aims. Think about it: 100 million handguns are owned in the US. The Supreme Court has repeatedly said that citizens are responsible enough to carry guns. Why are we continuing this rampage against the legal right to bear arms?

— Chester Magruder III, Creative writing freshman

Rising tuition out of step with family income

Colleges are raising tuition and fees much higher than the inflation rate and qualified students are losing out on higher education. According to the biennial report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, college tuition and fees have increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, while median family income only rose 147 percent.  

So, the government needs to appropriate funds correctly in order to slow the rising of costs. In addition, the colleges and universities could help this cause by distributing their money better, and not spending on ‘resort style’ dorms, luxurious gyms and gourmet dining halls. Adorning their campuses with not-so-glorious monuments symbolizing the change towards their uni-economic, uni-ethnic student body. 

But everyone is entitled to learn and get an education, though with the rising of costs it is becoming an impossible task. Those new gyms won’t increase efficiency in the classroom, but they will bring in the “”cash cows”” from across the country that can help them lower costs. But still, tuition continues to rise, so instead, this proposal of the government appropriating more funds would immensely help the controversy of higher tuition and costs of higher education institutions. But the same problem remains. 

Tuition and costs of higher education institutions are rising exponentially, while families are going into debt in order to provide their children with a better future. But if the government appropriated more money to higher education institutions, they wouldn’t have to keep raising their tuition and costs by so much. 

Overall, this frightening issue is feeding into our culture of consumerism, and is slowly validating that it’s OK to pay ridiculous amounts of money for education.

— Michael Llantino, Pre-business freshman