To the editor:

I would like to comment on Mike Hoeflich’s April 25 column on campus security. He implies that student privacy rights are the reason we no longer have universities acting as substitute parents prescribing correct behavior. That is not the entire story. For example, when I returned to Kansas University, along with other Vietnam veterans, we were not interested in KU acting as our staff sergeant. After several confrontations policies started to change.

Arguing that the student killer at Virginia Tech is “a committed terrorist” is harmful. This student was pathological and may have shared traits with terrorists, but he did not act to coerce or intimidate with the goal of having demands granted as do terrorists. Would this redefinition put those in need of psychiatric help at risk of permanent incarceration in places like Guantanamo Bay?

His conclusion about campus security issues – “That is the world in which we live” – is both passive and unhelpful. Social arrangements are created and can be modified. I would ask him to look at the charts on firearms on page 45 of the just-released April 30 issue of Newsweek, which summarizes known facts succinctly. The one chart on gun prevalence versus death places the United States nearly off the chart when compared with other industrialized nations. A big part of security of students on campus, Mike, is spelled G-U-N C-O-N-T-R-O-L.

Stewart Nowlin,

Lawrence