In November 2011, Liberty University — a private university located in Lynchburg, which, according to its website, has been “Training Champions for Christ” since 1971 — reversed a long-standing campus weapons ban to allow students, faculty and staff with a Virginia concealed-carry permit to bring guns on campus. The policy change took place a few months after Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli issued an advisory opinion arguing that Virginia universities could not legally bar firearms from their campuses.
The November 2011 policy change allowed students with permits to stash guns in their car, and granted some faculty and staff permission to bring weapons into university buildings. Late last month, however, the school loosened its firearms restrictions further. It revised its policies to allow students to carry loaded guns into university buildings, including classrooms.
Mr. Falwell’s university has a notoriously strict campus code in many respects. The school prohibits students from kissing or from listening to music that is not “in harmony with God’s word.” But when it comes to firearms the school grants its students a bit too much liberty.
For now, we’ll leave aside the question of whether universities should allow concealed carry on campus. Instead, we’ll assess Liberty’s most recent policy revision, which stripped away most of the restrictions on an already-loose gun policy: residence halls are now the only places on the school’s campus where students can’t bring firearms (though residence hall directors can).
Liberty’s new weapons policy — among the most relaxed in the country — will hurt the school’s academic climate. Guns in the classroom do not make for a stimulating learning environment. A constructive classroom setting requires a rough level of equality among its students and toleration for dissent and debate. Concealed weapons in the classroom threaten both these conditions.
An academic discussion is most stirring when all students feel comfortable participating. The classroom ideally tends toward a democratic atmosphere in which every student has an equal voice and feels as if her opinions hold the same weight as those of her peers. For some students to bring guns into the classroom could threaten this delicate equilibrium by establishing an uncomfortable tension between those who have guns and those who don’t.
More distressing than the possibility of a hierarchy between classroom gunslingers and classroom pacifists, however, is the chance that guns in the classroom could stifle spirited argument.
Academic disputes can become quite passionate. When students discuss topics of vital importance — What constitutes ethical conduct in warfare? How do we address racism? Does God exist? (The last question, at Liberty, might not come up for discussion) — emotions often run high.
But if students know or suspect that their peers are packing heat, they might be less willing to attack a classmate’s weak point or confront a position with which they disagree. The presence of guns in the classroom — which, again, would be an uneven presence, as only some in each class would be likely to carry weapons — is a presence of latent violence. As such, it offsets the psychology of the classroom. To maximize diversity of opinion and quality of student learning, the classroom must remain a safe space, insulated from the threat of force. At a school like Liberty, which already tends toward sectarianism, any policy that could discourage debate and dissent in the classroom imposes a heavy intellectual risk.
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