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E-mailer advocates guns on campus
By Geof Wollerman
gwollerm@mscd.edu

An anonymous mass e-mail arrived in UCDHSC e-mail boxes April 20 declaring that those who are able and willing should start carrying guns to campus.

The e-mail described itself in the subject line as a “Safety Bulletin for the Auraria Campus,” but had no affiliation with the school. Though the e-mail appeared very similar to an official college communication, it came from a .com address rather than the school’s actual website, which ends in .edu.

The unofficial e-mail, signed “The Abominable IceMan,” derided Auraria’s policy prohibiting weapons on campus. It also suggested that UCDHSC’s concern for student safety was “superficial” and that the school needed to stop infringing on students’ rights to defend themselves.

“Students and faculty who know themselves to be competent users of firearms should come to their respective schools armed so that if need be they can quickly dispatch of those who might wish to prey upon their fellow man,” the e-mail said.

The missive was apparently in response to an e-mail sent out earlier in the week by UCDHSC administrators, following the Virginia Tech shooting, which outlined crisis safety tips provided by the Auraria police.

In a response to the anonymous e-mail, which was sent out the same day, UCDHSC spokeswoman Danielle Zieg described the message as “spam” and “not a legitimate Safety Bulletin from the Auraria Campus, nor was it from the UCDHSC administration.”

It is unclear how many addresses the e-mail reached.

“We’re not sure they got the entire campus listing,” Zieg said, referring to whoever sent the e-mail. “We know that they got a lot. But because we know they did not hack into the system … we think it’s possibly that they literally spent hours copying and pasting addresses.”

Faculty and staff addresses are readily available from the Auraria campus directory, but student addresses would have to be culled from another source, such as class rosters, Zieg said.

UCDHSC’s information technology department looked into the origin of the e-mail and found it had “traipsed around a little bit,” Zieg said.

“We don’t really know who sent it or where they sent it from,” she said, adding that the e-mail was not sent from a UCDHSC address and that the school is continuing to pursue its origin.

Though UCDHSC’s response made clear the e-mail had nothing to do with administration policy, it did not address the issue of students or faculty bringing weapons to campus.

“Everybody absolutely has a right to their opinion, and if this was an environment where we were to give everybody an opportunity to share their opinion through our university system, then we’d get that kind of dialogue back and forth,” Zieg said. “But that’s not the place for that kind of conversation … that’s not what we do.”

The issue is not the extreme nature of the expressed opinion, but rather the inappropriate use of the university’s e-mail system, Zieg said.

“This is America, we have a right to our opinions,” she said. “Just because we don’t agree with it doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion.”

There is a strict campus policy in place regarding weapons and UCDHSC expects all of its students to adhere to it, Zieg said.

According to the Auraria Higher Education Center’s “no tolerance” weapons policy, anyone who is found in unauthorized possession of a firearm will be banned from campus. Though Denver allows residents to obtain a concealed weapon permit, this law does not extend onto Auraria.

“Anytime there’s an action or a tragedy that is so stark like this, you’re always going to have those factions or segments of the population that want to pursue their agenda or their cause,” said Lance Denning, Metro associate professor of political science, regarding responses to the shooting at Virginia Tech. “So you can see why second amendment rights become such a clarion call.”

It is such a sensitive time and such a tragic loss of life that peoples’ responses are going to be heated and emotional, Denning said in reference to the e-mail.

“I’m not sure if we want to necessarily pursue those sorts of emotional responses,” he said, explaining that it really comes down to an issue of security – or the lack of.

“I think one of the reasons why we’re willing to have a little bit of a loss of our independence in this world is because we think it’s a compromise – a good compromise, a fair compromise – for developing a measure of safety and security,” Denning said. “(We’re) allowing that intermediary position, like the campus police or the government in general, to … make us feel a little less insecure. And so we get uncomfortable when we lose that trust.”