Voices: Administrators and the Legislature failed UVU students

Note to readers: The Salt Lake Tribune does not generally consider anonymous op-ed submissions. However, because this author’s employment as an untenured UVU professor may be at risk, we’ve granted anonymity under the use of a pseudonym. We have independently confirmed the author’s identity.

I met Utah Valley University President Astrid Tuminez once, at an off-campus event where we were both invited guests. After introducing myself as a member of the UVU faculty, she waved me off with her hand: “Well, there’s just so many of you. I can’t keep track.”

It’s this posture that put the UVU community at risk Wednesday: UVU administration simply lost track of their faculty and students when they allowed Charlie Kirk to come to campus. Our administration ignored the petitions of students asking them not to host the known provocateur. Students tried to tell them. But I guess, when it comes to getting through the layers of administrators, “there’s just too many of you.” *waves my hand dismissively*

And so he came on Wednesday, exposing gross negligence on the part of the Utah Valley University administration and, by extension, the Utah state Legislature. Not only could anyone enter campus with open-carry firearms, the university provided very little police presence for a potentially volatile event.

And, when the unthinkable happened, the darkly laughable campus emergency response led to confusion, panic, and eventual gridlock with vulnerable students stuck in parking lots for hours. Communications were nonexistent at best and misleading at worst: Kirk was shot at 12:10 p.m.; campus notifications did not go out until 12:43 p.m., as one very small example. I cannot state my anger and disappointment in strong enough words.

I teach hundreds of students per academic year, and I know each of their names and many of their hopes, fears, struggles, and concerns. I know my students to be highly intelligent, curious, empathetic, hardworking people from everywhere on the political spectrum. But because of the current political and campus climate, my students also report:

But the folks at the top likely don’t know any of this, do they? They’re too far removed to actually sit one-on-one in an office with students, read their work, or hold class discussions, right?

Because if they did know this, Wednesday’s events would look like they simply didn’t care that students are losing faith in public institutions, and in the leaders that are supposed to protect them. They didn’t care that they made UVU a powder keg of political tension with no good plan for protecting their students.

News flash: you can’t take support and resources away from students and young people and not expect anger, hurt, fear and frustration. You can’t allow in the rhetors of violent speech and then be “shocked and saddened” when violence comes to your town.

I wish our administrators would sit in a classroom for once and listen to students. Better yet, I wish they could have been there as we faculty and students sat together in an active shooter shelter-in-place. They might have learned something beyond their quiet little chamber. Like how a single gunshot echoes and echoes and echoes.

Phoebe has been teaching at the university level for nearly 15 years—most of those years at Utah Valley University.

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