Eighty-one percent of current and potential students say gun policies influence their enrollment in college, which could cause trouble for Arizona’s public universities as a new bill allowing concealed carry makes its way through the state House.
The bill, which is known as SB 1198, states that “the governing board of any university, college or community college shall not enact of enforce any policy or rule that prohibits the possession of a concealed weapon” by someone who carries a valid permit.
That bill won’t be too popular among university students, however.
Most students prefer schools that restrict guns on campus, and one in three students worry “at least a fair amount” about gun violence, according to a new poll by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation.
That means that if SB 1198 becomes law, the University of Arizona, Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University could see a hit on enrollment.
Courtney Brown, the vice president of impact and planning at the Lumina Foundation, said that was one of the reasons that the findings were so important.
“We’re seeing an enrollment decrease over the last 10 years, so it’s important to understand what barriers (students) are facing,” she told the Arizona Daily Star.
The feeling of “security and safety on campus” is causing students “not to enroll or to enroll in certain places,” Brown said.
And the issue isn’t partisan, according to the findings. More than three-quarters of current and prospective Republican students say campus gun policies are important to their enrollment decisions.
Additionally, students prefer more restrictive gun policies by a 5-to-1 margin. That includes 91% of Democrats, 85% of Independents and 71% of Republicans surveyed.
It was “shocking,” Brown said, that across age, gender, race, ethnicity and party affiliation, the data were relatively cohesive.
“I think it is counter to what we tell ourselves,” she noted. “It shows why it’s so important to get these data from students.”
One in three current in-person students worry about gun violence on campus, as well. Ninety-two percent of those students say that gun policies are at least somewhat important in their enrollment decisions.
“Policymakers need to pay attention because if there are things that they are putting into place that are turning students away, either forcing them to leave the state to go somewhere else or making them not go at all, it’s going to create a problem for some of these states,” Brown said.
There are plenty of students, she noted, that would “rather go to school in a state that has stricter gun laws.”
And if SB1198 were to become law, then public universities like the UA would need to consider further beefing up security measures. That could be especially hard in Tucson, as the UA is currently facing a $177 million deficit.
“There are things that universities can do to attract students and make sure that they have a sense of security,” Brown noted. “How do we make sure they feel secure? How do we bulk up the security on our campuses?”
