Campus leaders are weighing a rule change that would allow concealed carry firearms in University of Wyoming buildings. Guns are currently allowed on campus grounds, but most people are forbidden from carrying them into university facilities.

The new proposal is unpopular with both students and employees, who are worried about what the change could mean for campus safety.

In a recent campus wide survey with five distinct options, 64% of all respondents wanted the current weapons ban to stay in place. That included a majority of faculty (87.5%), staff (74%), and students (55%), and half of those who weren't part of the campus community, but self-identified as "Wyoming residents."

Despite the clear opposition from campus, UW has been weighing the change since the last state legislative session, during which lawmakers passed a bill outlawing gun-free zones across the state. Gov. Mark Gordon vetoed that bill, but directed entities like the University of Wyoming to reevaluate their bans on firearms.

The UW Board of Trustees is expected to vote on the issue later this week. Ahead of that vote, university leaders have released the draft rule change and hosted two public events to field questions from community members.

During a public webinar last week, Ven Meester, the editor of the UW student newspaper and leader of the civic dialogue organization BridgeUWYO, said students weren’t the ones calling for this change.

"We don't understand who's been pushing for this, beyond the legislature and the governor," he said. "Those who don't want it to happen see it as a safety concern for students, and those who do want it to happen don't really understand what the benefits are beyond just: they get to conceal carry, and that's a constitutional right."

George Mocsary is the director of the Firearms Research Center. During the webinar, he said there's not much evidence that allowing concealed carry will endanger students.

"The widespread issuance of concealed carry licenses — there's something like 20 million of them issued in the nation now — hasn't endangered public safety in the larger society in other ways at ball games or rodeos or supermarkets, movie theaters, et cetera," Mocsary said. "The same can be said of the few hundred of the nation's universities that allow carry on campus."

He added concealed carry might deter violent criminals from coming to campus.

"We know that murderers often select targets because of the absence of armed defenders," Mocsary said. "They say so in what the media tend to call their manifestos."

Meester and Mocsary hosted the online webinar alongside UW Police Chief Josh Holland and UW General Counsel Tara Evans. All four were joined by UW President Ed Seidel during a packed in-person town hall Monday.

The panel members discussed some ins-and-outs of the policy, reiterating that the rule change, as written, would only allow those with concealed carry permits (and therefore only those 21 or older) to carry within buildings.

But during the Q-and-A session that followed, parents, students, researchers and recruiters questioned the wisdom and safety of welcoming more guns to campus.

One student said her parents would not have allowed her to attend UW if this policy had been in place when she was a high schooler. A parent said she worried about introducing more guns into student housing, on a campus that periodically experiences suicide, in a state where firearm-related suicides are prevalent.

University staff also questioned whether they could trust Mocsary's analysis that concealed carry wouldn't decrease campus safety — given that the firearms research center receives funding from gun manufacturers.

"How are we to believe that the data we're receiving and the information we're receiving is, in fact, nonpartisan and unbiased as they advertise?" asked Emily Edgar, a member of UW's marketing team.

Mocsary said his analysis was unbiased.

"Our donors don't dictate our content, as with any center, I hope, on this university," he said. "The data on which we base this is all publicly available. None of it is sort of coming out of thin air."

UW President Seidel backed him up.

"I believe [Mocsary] looks at the data dispassionately in a disinterested manner, and I think that is his goal as director of that center," the president said.

Matt McDermit, associate director of enrollment marketing, said he had personally been the victim of gun violence before.

"There are many others like me who have had lives changed by guns," he said. "I should not have to stand up here and plead that a university should not be a place for guns."

McDermit said this would make his job as a recruiter more difficult.

"I'm in the field of telling students that their choice to come here is a safe one," he said. "That's getting harder and harder to do."

Mocsary said there was no evidence allowing concealed carry on campus would decrease enrollment. Seidel added it was possible such a decision could increase enrollment by attracting students who found the prospect inviting — but he said he didn't know how it would affect enrollment.

Enrollment at UW has plummeted in the last five years.

The university's Board of Trustees is expected to vote later this week on the proposed policy. The draft rule could be altered before trustees vote on it.