After Gov. Greg Abbott signed the campus carry bill in June and the law unsettlingly went into effect on the 50th anniversary of the UT Tower massacre, this year will be the first for many students to experience a campus with multiple people carrying a gun. Unsurprisingly, the law has caused much tension on campus, with many students and staff protesting against it.

The most recent protest, Cocks Not Glocks, attempts to fight “absurdity with absurdity” and has distributed dildos and other phallic objects all week. And although Cocks Not Glocks is a hilarious attempt in demonstrating the ridiculousness of the campus carry law, what it and many other common forms of student activism fail to do is enact any substantial change in overturning the actual legislation. 

Ana Lopez, vice president of Students Against Campus Carry, outlines why such a protest is necessary.

“The Legislature keeps pushing for the normalization of deadly weapons, but props like dildos are still totally taboo regardless of how harmless they really are,” Lopez said. “Campus carry is not going to go away, and consequences may only get worse. As long as there will be concealed handguns in backpacks, there will be openly carried dildos right next to them.”

Don’t get me wrong — I don’t want a person that’s holding a dildo while reading the Texan to think that their form of civil engagement is unnecessary. Protests have been integral in maintaining progress for the larger society, and without them the suffrage or civil rights movements would never have picked up.

However, the difference between dildo-loaded students and disenfranchised black individuals is that one fizzles out because some other student activism group decided to protest at Main Mall the next week, while the other’s dialogue of the issue at hand is something that is continually conversed about not only at rallies, but also among political leadership so actual change occurs. 

Moisés Naím, contributor for The Atlantic, writes that protests need organization and continuity to really succeed.

“The problem is what happens after the march,” Naim wrote. “More often than not, it simply fizzles out. Behind massive street demonstrations there is rarely a well-oiled and more-permanent organization capable of following up on protesters’ demands and undertaking the complex, face-to-face, and dull political work that produces real change in government.”

Most college protests hardly ever translate into actual change. Protests ought to be bigger than just rallying up in a designated spot on campus. Protests ought to be movements. They should have leaders, they should be organized and should continue far beyond their initial waves and banners — not to say that Cocks Not Glocks hasn’t been a movement, but rather that it ought to strive for more. 

The essential next step for any student participating in Cocks Not Glocks today is to continue expressing your grievances on other avenues, such as specifically voting against candidates that introduced Senate Bill 11 in the first place or following and supporting the three UT professors that are suing both the University and state. Actions such as these are even more necessary when protests as big as Cocks Not Glocks get the amount of followers they have. Because even dildos won’t be enough for campus carry to get off.

Chourdury is an economics sophomore from Richardson. He is an associate editor. Follow him on Twitter @MubarratC.