Patrick Washburn says the banished rifle is part of his heritage.
Posted on 03/06/2002 5:01:37 PM PST by the
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Patrick Washburn says the banished rifle is part of his heritage.
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ATHENS, Ohio -- Amid the fishing gear that adorns his office walls, Ohio University journalism Professor Patrick Washburn reserved a spot for a piece of family history.
For 15 years, Washburn displayed his great-grandfather's rifle.
But someone complained, and in January, OU police ordered him to remove the rifle.
University officials say the school's workplace violence policy forbids the display.
"It's been up all these years,'' Washburn said last week. "Why do they suddenly care?''
Washburn, 60, said neither he nor the 1878 Springfield rifle poses a threat to anyone.
"I've never even touched it,'' the tenured professor said. "I don't even know what kind of shell it takes.''
University officials said that doesn't matter.
"Clearly it's a violation of the policy,'' said Kathy Krendl, dean of OU's College of Communications. "There's no ifs, ands or buts about it.''
The policy, which took effect in December 2000, forbids any OU employee from possessing or displaying a host of weapons, including "firearms, martial arts devices, bows and arrows or other archery types of devices, slingshots, blow darts, blackjacks, stun guns, tasers or other kinds of submission devices.''
Krendl said that in late January, someone at OU complained about Washburn's rifle. After consulting with OU's legal affairs office, she turned the matter over to campus police.
On Jan. 25, an officer told Washburn to remove the rifle or face possible disciplinary action.
Washburn complied, but has barraged OU officials with letters, e- mails and public-records requests in an effort to find out who lodged the complaint, and why, if the gun was a problem, the issue wasn't raised earlier.
"What else am I going to have to remove from my office?'' he asked in a Feb. 11 letter to OU Police Chief Stephen Ramirez. "Am I going to be allowed to have sharpened pencils?''
Washburn called the order "harassment'' and an attempt to "somehow make me look dangerous.''
OU is sticking to its guns.
"We were not told earlier about your gun, but this does not grandfather a permission for you to have a gun in your office, decoration or not,'' OU Legal Affairs Director John Burns informed Washburn in an e- mail last week.
"And there is no provision for an exception for you in the policy.''
Other schools have similar policies. For example, Ohio State University issued a workplace violence policy in 1999 that states that no employee may possess a "deadly weapon'' on campus property.
Both Ohio State and OU policies state that punishment can include termination.
OU spokeswoman Leesa Brown said concerns about workplace violence at universities should be taken seriously in the wake of incidents such as the Jan. 16 shootings at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Va.
A student there who had been dismissed for poor grades is charged in the fatal shooting of a dean, a professor and a student, and wounding three other students.
Brown said she knew one of those killed, law-school Dean L. Anthony Sutin.
"I just went to the funeral of a 41- year-old father of two, who was assassinated in his office,'' she said.
Washburn, who also has removed from his office wall a spear given to him by a graduate student, said the rifle is a piece of his heritage.
"This was my great-grandfather's gun, who served in the Union army at age 16,'' he said. "This is an ancestor's gun.''
In your article about the journalism Prof at OU who was made to take down his antique rifle, why did you let Leesa Brown's comment go (about the shooting at the law school in Virginia) without telling the whole story.
The shooter in that case was stopped from committing further violence when two students at the school retreived their own personally owned firearms, confronting the shooter and convincing him to surrender.
Mentioning the shooting at the school, without mentioning that privately owned guns cut the shooting spree off, tells only half of the story.
Omitting coverage of when guns are used by private citizens to do heroic acts skews the publics picture of the issue.
You should endeavor to do be more fair.
P.S. For the full story, check out: Article about what really happened at law school.
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You are falling through outer space,
Your eyes are getting very heavy,
You feel yourself floating.
When I count backwards from 10
You will be under my control.
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Send FR $500.00! Or whatever amount you can...
priceless!
It would make a great display!
Looks like everyone thinks they're Norm Mineta these days.
Yes, comrade. Party policy must take precedence over common sense and Constitutional Rights. Dissent will not be tolerated. /sarcasm
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