AUSTIN, Texas, Oct. 12 (UPI) — More than 2,000 people have pledged to protest the University of Texas at Austin’s concealed weapons policy by openly displaying “gigantic” sex toys.
Jessica Jin, the student who created the “Campus (DILDO) Carry” event on Facebook, wrote that the event — planned for the first day of fall semester Aug. 24, 2016 — protests concealed weapons being allowed on the school’s campus while university policy bans displays of “obscenity.”
“On June 1, 2015, Gov. Greg Abbott signed S.B. 11, also known as the ‘campus carry’ law. S.B. 11 provides that license holders may carry a concealed handgun throughout university campuses, starting Aug. 1, 2016. The law gives public universities some discretion to regulate campus carry,” Jin wrote on the event page.
“The State of Texas has decided that it is not at all obnoxious to allow deadly concealed weapons in classrooms, however it DOES have strict rules about free sexual expression, to protect your innocence. You would receive a citation for taking a DILDO to class before you would get in trouble for taking a gun to class. Heaven forbid the penis,” she wrote.
Jin said she was inspired by a radio discussion about the Oct. 9 shootings at Texas Southern University, Northern Arizona University and an elementary school in Upland, Calf.
“I did little research on the rules surrounding dildos in classrooms,” Jin told The Daily Texan. “When I discovered that it is indeed against UT policy to wave dildos around campus, I just couldn’t help myself.”
“Starting on the first day of Long Session classes on Aug. 24, 2016, we are strapping gigantic swinging dildos to our backpacks in protest of campus carry,” she wrote on the event page. “ANYBODY can participate in solidarity: alum, non-UT students, people outside of Texas. Come one dildo, come all dildos.”
Jin wrote the sex toys are “just about as effective at protecting us from sociopathic shooters, but much safer for recreational play.”
“You’re carrying a gun to class? Yeah well I’m carrying a HUGE DILDO,” she wrote.
Allison Peregory, chairwoman of the Young Conservatives of Texas UT chapter and a student representative of Students for Concealed Carry, decried the planned protest as childish.
“I don’t know what [people] plan to do with a dildo against an assailant,” Peregory said. “But as a woman, and I know other Texas women agree with me, we’re going to take concealed carry over a dildo to protect us any day.”
Economics professor emeritus Daniel Hamermesh, who has been teaching at the university since the 1990s, announced last week he is leaving his position because he feels the new law is harmful to his own safety.
“With a huge group of students my perception is that the risk that a disgruntled student might bring a gun into the classroom and start shooting at me has been substantially enhanced by the concealed-carry law,” Hamermesh told the Houston Chronicle.
