The backlash continues on the recent campus carry decision at the University of Texas at Austin.
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“I would have never applied for another job if not for campus carry”, Steiner told nonprofit news service The Texas Tribune.
A prominent dean at the University of Texas has quit for another job because of a new law which will allow students to bring concealed handguns into classrooms. “I don’t see a bunch of quail or pheasant running around the campus”, School of Architecture Dean Frederick Steiner told CNN.
Long-time dean Fritz Steiner agreed, saying it was “already part of the conversation when I was trying to recruit and retain graduate students”. In 1999, dean Lawrence Speck stepped down after Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron resigned from their commission to design the Blanton Museum. While there, he led efforts to elevate the department to school status, developed a college-wide interdisciplinary doctoral program in environmental design and planning, won accreditation for degree programs in planning and landscape architecture and created an undergraduate program in landscape architecture.
Steiner isn’t the only faculty member uncomfortable over the campus carry law.
Campus carry became law previous year, but doesn’t go into effect until August 1.
But Steiner said he has turned down similar opportunities in the past, and probably would have done the same if people weren’t going to be allowed to carry guns in classrooms and other places on the UT-Austin campus next school year.
He said: “I thought I would be responsible for enforcing a law I don’t believe in”.
Steiner said he’s not anti-guns, but doesn’t want them in the halls of higher education.
And now, some UH professors are reportedly proposing guidelines that, among other things, tell teachers to be careful about discussing “sensitive topics”, to possibly drop certain topics from the curriculum and to “limit student access off hours”.
College professors and administrators across Texas are grappling with how to handle the state’s controversial new campus-carry law, with some even suggesting instructors remove controversial content from their lessons to avoid riling up armed students. But his letter to colleagues mentions his pride in what they have accomplished over the past 15 years.
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The pro-gun group Students for Concealed Carry sent the Texas Tribune a baffling statement in response to Steiner’s resignation: “Just as witches were not to blame for the Salem witch trials, and just as vaccines are not to blame for the negative results of the anti-vaccine movement, campus carry is not to blame for the current atmosphere of fear on Texas college campuses”.
