**University opposes concealed carry**

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS — KU students may be allowed to pack guns along with their books and mp3 players when they head to class sometime in the near future.

A proposed bill in the state legislature would make Kansas just one of four states that currently allow concealed guns on its campuses, according to armedcampuses.org; the other states are Utah, Colorado, Michigan and Virginia. It’s a possibility that has evoked an intense response from gun advocates, educators and students and has sparked a debate about the best way to keep university campuses safe.

Since 2007, Kansas has issued concealed-carry permits to applicants who are 21 or older, pass a criminal background check and participate in an eight-hour firearm course, according to the Kansas Attorney General’s website. The permit gives holders the right to carry a concealed gun into any business or public building that does not have a “no guns allowed” sign at its entrance.

In 2010, Rep. Forrest Knox, R-Altoona, proposed a similar bill that would allow concealed weapons on campus, but although it passed in the House, it stalled in the Senate.

—The Daily Kansan
By Aaron Couch

**UA professor contributes to racial-divide poll**

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS — A report released by the Winthrop-Rockefeller Institute in collaboration with a UA assistant professor proved what many already suspected: electing Barack Obama has not led to a post-racial society.

“For many persons it was a confirmation of what they perceived was happening in America as far as racial realities,” assistant professor Pearl Dowe said.

Polls, including the Blair-Rockefeller poll Dowe worked on, do not show any positive or negative effect because of Obama’s election, Dow said.

“It’s consistent and has not changed,” she said. “In looking at previous opinion polls, much of the same issues and experiences of African-Americans are consistent. So the president’s office did not change the actual day-to-day experience of being African-American.”

The discrimination poll, which Dowe started work on following the 2010 midterm elections, surveyed 3,400 Americans, with 800 black respondents. Usual polling normally has a smaller black survey group, she said.

About 80 percent of blacks nationwide said they experienced day-to-day discrimination. Sixty-two percent of Southern Latinos and 66 percent of non-Southern Latinos who answered said they experience daily discrimination, according to the poll.

—The Arkansas Traveler
By Jack Suntrup

**Sexuality and gender issues addressed with “Growing Up Gay in the USA: A Town Hall Event”**

PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY — State College Area School District was not prepared when three of its elementary school children identified as transgender individuals in the past few years.

These students went to school identifying as one gender and the next fall, came back identifying as the other, State College Area High School counselor Susan Marshall Brindle said.

In an effort to awaken the public to sexuality and gender issues, an open forum was held Tuesday night at the Penn State Downtown Theatre Center, 146 S. Allen Street. It allowed members of the community to ask questions to a panel of experts regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and ally issues, and diversity in general.

The conversation veered toward brainstorming solutions to bullying and bringing LGBTA education to younger children.

When asked how many in the audience had been given schooling about homosexuality and gender studies in their primary and secondary education curriculum, no hands were raised.

Moderator Susan Russell, artistic director of Cultural Conversations, told the audience the goal of the event was to have rare conversations.

“Conversation without solution is just polemic banter,” Russell said.

—The Daily Collegian
By Brittany Truscott