By Maxim Lott
A professor in Connecticut reported one of her students to the police after he gave a class presentation on why students and teachers should be allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus. Now, free speech activists say the professor’s actions are what really need to be investigated.
Last October, John Wahlberg and two classmates at Central Connecticut State University gave an oral presentation for a communications class taught by Professor Paula Anderson. The assignment was to discuss a “relevant issue in the media,” and the students presented their view that the death toll in the April 2007 Virginia Tech shooting massacre would have been lower if professors and students had been carrying guns.
That night, police called Wahlberg, a 23-year-old senior, and asked him to come to the station. When he arrived, they they read off a list of firearms that were registered in his name and asked where he kept them. Guns are strictly prohibited on the CCSU campus and residence halls, but Wahlberg says he lives 20 miles off-campus and keeps his gun collection locked up in a safe. No further action was taken by police or administrators.
“I don’t think that Professor Anderson was justified in calling the CCSU police over a clearly non-threatening matter,” Wahlberg told The Recorder, the CCSU student newspaper that first reported the story. “Although the topic of discussion may have made a few individuals uncomfortable, there was no need to label me as a threat.”Wahlberg declined to comment further to FOXNews.com, saying he did not want more media attention. . . . . .
. . . . . “[Wahlberg] certainly has a reason to complain, since he didn’t do anything directly threatening. But I wouldn’t say the administration has a reason to sanction or punish the professor or the police.... I don’t know if I would have done anything differently in the situation.”
Katie Kasprzak, a spokeswoman for the group Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, suggested that the professor called the police because she disagreed with Wahlberg’s political views.
"Critics of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus argue that colleges and universities are dedicated to the free flow of ideas,” she said. “Yet when a student gives a class presentation on a relevant issue in the media, it is acceptable to label the student as a threat? The only threat posed was a threat to the professor’s personal beliefs.”
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