I’m a professor. I am a tenured associate professor with all the privileges that entails. Next year I will be the chair of our faculty senate. I am more liberal than some, more conservative than many, and hopelessly academic. I have been a member of the Army National Guard then transferred to the United States Marine Corps, and I served in two different sheriffs offices as a deputized officer. Given the opportunity I would sign up and serve in the military again without thought. At age 42 I doubt they would take me. I’d make an ugly fat lieutenant.

I am not an expert at counter insurgency. I am a parasite sucking the ideas of counter insurgency out of the community and reusing it to explain the transnational nature of cyber crime and cyber warfare. As an academic I look for information and data that allows me to test my theories in the real world. I would rather learn from the mistakes of others than endure the same pain for no gain. I am slightly different because my discipline is technology. I am inherently an applied academician. My fellow faculty in the liberal arts say when being nice that I am “a bit rough around the edges.”

Not all the faculty agree even among themselves.

A few weeks ago a hopeless Marxist sociologist was incensed that the United States Marine Corps sponsored an event on campus about leadership. Simply put he was angered that they may have been involved in recruiting even though he didn’t see any. He was also very angry that they were in full uniform. He would argue to have the military banned from campus though patently illegal.

Across the nation violence on campus has gone up as the economy has gone down. A few weeks ago a student was car jacked at gunpoint, and recently two students were “hand assaulted” by eight ski mask wearing individuals inside one of the laboratories. There was an awful hue and cry about something should be done. Even though our campus is in Hammond, IN next to Gary, IN a top pick for murder capital of the United States and all we’ve had were two smallish assaults. Perspective is not one of our strong suits in academia. I put together a quick study on policing standards and what the per capita officer ratio was for other campuses. Showing we had an officer shortage though not drastic.

Students though were incensed about one thing. They are not allowed to carry weapons on campus. Though Indiana has a specific provision about cities and counties making laws regarding weapons campuses can make rules and enforce them as law respecting weapons. No weapons allowed on campus. Students have been asking that the law be changed by the state. This last week there has been a cry of alarm by the faculty that students might be armed. Since I teach forensics and security topics several of my students are officers or deputies. They all carry concealed weapons all the time much like I did. Some faculty want to take the weapons away from our state certified fully commissioned campus police officers on campus.

On the one hand there are demands that something be done, and on the other hand they would remove the rights of people to protect themselves and the tools from those they have charged with that protection.

I think the fact is that you find divergent opinions among the faculty, students, and community. The entire faculty does not unanimously agree on any single point anymore than any community agrees on a single point. It is easy to pick single loud opinions out of the mix and paint a broad brush across the community. As an example a pundit here on Small Wars Council often paints a broad brush of slacker, drunk, lazy, idiocy across the entire college student community. Yet my students are smart, brave, often veterans, work 40 hours a week, take 48 hours a week of course work, do 30 to 40 hours of homework a week and rarely sleep. Many are first generation. Most are on the “pay as you go” plan since they can do the math on student loans.

Think of it this way. When you paint with broad words like liberal and conservative the chance is you are just going to make a mess. Sure you may paint the wall quickly but you cover up the windows to deeper meaning and discussion too.