Michael Stipe

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal will soon decide if Georgia colleges and universities will be forced to allow hidden, loaded handguns onto campuses across the state. If the governor signs the bill on his desk, he’ll be going against the 78% of Georgians who say they oppose guns on campus, as well as a host of college administrators and prominent student and faculty organizations that have spoken out against the bill.

For me, this battle hits close to home. I met my future R.E.M. bandmates when we were all students at the University of Georgia in Athens. It was there that we started playing together and performing and years later, several of us still call Athens home.

For us and for so many others, college is this incredible moment when you get to make mistakes and learn from them. You start becoming an adult. You get to delve into what you love and get obsessed with it. You go to parties and drink too much. You fall asleep in the library and wake up hours before a paper is due. We all have our own versions of these stories. We all know the crazy things we did in college. Some moments we regret and others become the stories we tell time and again.

Like many other Georgians, I am worried about how guns on campus would affect college life. I worry about what it means when loaded guns are allowed at a tailgate where alcohol is being served. I’m concerned for survivors of sexual assault, who may soon have to face an armed assailant at the time of the crime and again at their disciplinary hearing.

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I’m worried about classrooms. If students are debating a contested subject – which is crucial to learning and expanding their worldviews – I worry what will happen to that open and honest conversation when the participants know that the people around them could have loaded guns in their backpacks.

When similar legislation passed in Texas, renowned professors left – refusing to teach with guns forced into their classrooms. Six of the major universities and university systems in the state estimated a combined cost of $56 million over six years to prepare for guns on campus. Cash strapped Georgia schools simply can’t afford this.

Bills to allow guns on campus are a priority of the gun lobby, but they are overwhelmingly opposed by the American public. If Deal vetoes the Georgia measure, he would be in good company. Such measures have been proposed this year in 17 states, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, which tracks gun legislation. So far five states – Indiana, Virginia, Wisconsin, Kentucky and West Virginia – have rejected the bills and none of the others have passed. Last year, 18 states considered guns on campus legislation. Just one, Texas, moved forward with the idea.

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Deal has rightfully expressed concerns about how such a law would endanger children in daycares on college campuses and how it would affect Georgia’s acclaimed Move On When Ready program, which is utilized by thousands of high school students who take classes on college campuses. Parents of high school students and children in the daycares echoed Deal’s concerns and asked him to veto the bill for the safety of their children.

Everyone in this fight believes they’re fighting to make colleges safer. But a loud gun lobby shouldn’t outweigh the voices of people across the country — 78 percent of students, 95 percent of college presidents and 89 percent of police chiefs — who say they don’t want this.

It’s the students, faculty, and staff who live and work on college campuses who should get to decide something as important as whether or not to allow guns on campus. It’s their voices that should matter most.

I hope the governor listens to his constituents and does what’s in the best interest of all citizens of Georgia by vetoing this dangerous bill.

Michael Stipe is a singer/songwriter, artist and activist.

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