Two months before the university experienced an active shooter threat, the OU Student Government Association Undergraduate Student Congress felt campus safety was a concern of many students and wrote legislation to address the bills moving through the Oklahoma legislature aiming to increase access to guns.
The Oklahoma House of Representatives advanced House Bill 2139 to the Oklahoma Senate on March 22, which would allow faculty and staff to open and conceal carry at Oklahoma Public Schools if licensed. In total, over 100 bills were introduced in the state legislature this session that would increase access to firearms.
“Many students are afraid for their lives … because they just don’t feel safe,” said Weslie Griffin, Undergraduate Student Congress External Affairs Committee chair. “These bills are creating a dangerous rhetoric in our state legislature that could eventually trickle down and really hurt students.”
The bill asserts the organization’s stance on campus and gun safety, which states the current law should not change and recommends legislators to uphold this.
The Oklahoma Self-Defense Act states that guns are prohibited on school, college, university or technology center grounds unless stated otherwise by administration. In a message to OU Daily, a university spokesperson wrote OU is committed to providing students with a safe environment and that the current law works well.
Griffin and Abby Halsey-Kraus, Congress chair, said they also believe the current law is effective as is and that any loosening would be detrimental to the student body.
“I really think this should be one of our main priorities on campus,” Halsey-Kraus said. “I fully believe SGA has two purposes: funding and advocacy. If we aren’t advocating this, then I think we’re completely missing the ball on what we should be doing.”
She said specifically Senate Bill 820 and Senate Bill 664, which aim to allow anyone with a gun license to carry unless they’ve had a prior violent incident, were of concern because they covered university grounds. Namely, Senate Bill 820 says they may conceal carry, and Senate Bill 664 says they must open carry.
Both bills, authored by Sen. Nathan Dahm (R-Broken Arrow) and Sen. Rob Standridge (R-Norman) respectively, were introduced on Feb. 6 and have been referred to second readings by the Senate Public Safety Committee.
Lacey Lewis, Congress chair emeritus, helped write most of SGA’s gun safety bill and took them to Halsey-Kraus and Griffin. Halsey-Kraus and Griffin said Lewis was prompted to look into it by some members of the OU Board of Regents, who were all concerned about the potential negative impact these bills would have.
“Campus safety is an issue that affects quite literally every single student, so we all really took it to heart that this was a bill that had real consequences,” Halsey-Kraus said. “A lot of the time, the bills we write pertain to our little SGA bubble, so this is my first bill that pertains to campus in a way that’s not just internal affairs. It’s having a real impact.”
Griffin said he talked with legislators who assured him these bills wouldn’t pass because they’re “red meat bills,” which are designed to rile voter bases and act as virtue signaling, according to Business Insider. However, he said the fact they were presented in the first place concerned him.
“The fact legislators feel they can play fast and loose with our safety in order to gain favor — because if these bills were to go through, or if they do get enough traction — it’s going to create a situation on campus where many students are going to feel unsafe,” Griffin said.
He and Halsey-Kraus said the recent shooting at Michigan State University on Feb. 13, two weeks after the SGA bill was presented, brought campus and gun safety to the forefront of many congress members’ minds, and he brought this concern to legislators at Higher Education Day.
“Obviously, right after the MSU shooting happened, campus safety was super fresh on people’s minds,” Griffin said. “A lot of the legislators are on the side of the students, so they were attentive to what we felt needed to be changed, and I know safety was one of the biggest things, especially with what’s happened.”
According to the Mass Shooting Tracker, which defines shootings as “four or more persons shot in one incident, at one location, at roughly the same time,” two of the 170 mass shootings across the country have been in Oklahoma in 2023.
On the same day as OU’s false alarm, six people were injured in a shooting at a beach in Isle of Palms, South Carolina, hours prior and Kennesaw State University reported a potentially armed suspect on campus.
Griffin said if this is an issue of concern for his fellow students, he recommends reaching out to state officials and expressing these sentiments.
“Let them know how you feel about this issue because a lot of these bills that are trying to loosen campus and gun safety are going to keep coming every year,” Griffin said. “The only way to stop them is telling your legislators, ‘This is enough. I don’t want to see this. I want you to vote no, or I’m not gonna vote for you next year.’”
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This story was edited by Alexia Aston, Karoline Leonard and Jazz Wolfe. Francisco Gutierrez and Teegan Smith copy edited this story.
