While I thank Nick Roland for his service to our country, it’s entirely misguided and inappropriate for him to use the fifth anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings to espouse a pro-guns-on-campus line in his firing line published Monday. His two institutions, Virginia Tech and UT, have been the scenes of some of the most violent mass shootings on college campuses in this country.

Proponents of guns on campus think that their ability to “come to the rescue” is valiant, but it disguises the real issue. I think back to the incident of Sept. 28, 2010. Imagine if we had a campus full of armed students trying to take out Colton Tooley. What would have happened when armed police officers, knowing that there was an active shooter, had come across Roland or some other student “taking out” the real gunman? An even greater tragedy.

Leave the policing to the police, and keep guns off this campus.

Michael Redding
Graduate Student Assembly president
Texas Student Media contract employee