CHEYENNE—Humming “Amazing Grace” and lying on the floor outside Gov. Mark Gordon’s office, a group of University of Wyoming students hoped to send the chief executive a direct message: Do not repeal Wyoming’s gun-free zones.
Staged as a “die-in” protest, students wore white T-shirts splattered with red paint and held signs that read “I’d rather not be a target,” “Books > Bullets” and “I don’t feel safe in school.”
House Bill 172, “Repeal gun free zones and preemption amendments,” passed on third reading Friday in the state Senate. On Monday, Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, and Speaker of the House Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, signed the bill, which is now House Enrolled Act 24, heading to Gordon’s desk.
Students have repeatedly spoken at legislative committee meetings this session about their opposition to HB 172, which would affect the university, as well as Wyoming’s K-12 schools and other state-owned facilities. Still, students say they feel they’ve been largely ignored in the process.
“I was pretty disappointed to see [HB 172] pass with so little debate, with so little consideration for any amendments or the safeguards we’d been asking for,” Associated Students of the University of Wyoming Director of Community and Governmental Affairs Sophia Gomelsky told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle Monday afternoon.
“The fact that it flew through the House so fast is pretty representative of the fact that lawmakers are not listening,” she said.
Lying on the floor outside Gordon’s office was perhaps their last-ditch effort to be heard.
“We’re hoping to snap [lawmakers] back to reality to make them realize they have constituents they took an oath to serve. When we aren’t being listened to, we can’t just go on as usual, with legislation that is actively putting us in danger,” Gomelsky said.
Gordon vetoed a bill very similar to HB 172 in 2024, and many similar measures have failed to become state law over the years. Michael Pearlman, communications director for the governor’s office, told the WTE in an email Monday afternoon that Gordon had “thanked Sophia for exercising her First Amendment rights, and said he would take her comments into consideration.”
Gordon is still considering the bill and has until Thursday to act on it, Pearlman said.
Gomelsky said the governor did come out of his office Monday to speak with her.
“We have talked about issues that affect students quite a few times, and we talked about the implications of this bill,” she said. “We are asking for a veto. He vetoed the bill last year. It was a bad idea last year, it is a bad idea this year. It has hardly changed.”
UW undergrad Liz Pearson attended the protest, she said, because she believes adding more guns will only increase violence on campus, whether through misfires, suicides or other violence that could become a direct threat to the student body.
“I have actually heard students from where I graduated [Riverton High School] saying they are not going to want to come to UW if this passes. They don’t want to come to school where they feel unsafe,” Pearson said.
Jaycee Myrtle, a graduate student at UW, said not only does HB 172 threaten students, but many other pieces of legislation moving through the state Capitol has dampened morale at the university. A protest flier for the Monday event included reference to “legislation that will harm students, including allowing guns in schools and anti-LGBTQ+ bills targeting trans students.”
“I’m hoping that we’re heard and listened to, because we are out here being vulnerable … and with DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion programming] being taken away, it just feels so unsafe,” Myrtle said.
UW trustees voted not to allow concealed carry; lawmakers discuss making theirs an elected office
Last November, the University of Wyoming Board of Trustees met several times, and held a series of public meetings to discuss allowing concealed carry firearms on campus. Ultimately that board, which is appointed by the governor, voted 6-5 on Nov. 22 against allowing concealed carry permit holders to take firearms into campus facilities.
Trustee Macey Moore said at the time that the entire process felt like a “giant disruption” to the university’s mission. Concealed carry permit holders are currently allowed to carry on university open space like Prexy’s Pasture, but not inside facilities, classrooms and faculty offices.
Monday morning, Rep. Rachel Rodriguez Williams, R-Cody, who leads the House Freedom Caucus, a group of hardline Republican lawmakers, presented House Bill 148, “University of Wyoming governance-elected trustees,” to the Senate Education Committee. Her bill would allow for seven elected UW trustees, which she said would “provide accountability without upending” the existing trustee structure.
“There is nothing that unifies Wyomingites like our university, regardless of disagreements on politics, religion and or the litany of other things that divide us today. We all love our Wyoming Cowboys,” Rodriguez-Williams told the committee.
However, she continued that many in her area are concerned about the leadership at UW and would like a say in how trustees are selected.
Sen. Charles Scott, R-Casper, pointed out that the Wyoming Constitution clearly states that university trustees “shall be appointed by the governor.” Gordon’s chief of staff, Drew Perkins, said in committee that his office agrees the constitution is “pretty clear” on the fact that that board shall be appointed.
“How can you construe that language as allowing for elected trustees?” Scott asked.
Rodriguez-Williams responded that she had vetted her bill through staff attorneys, who had no concerns, but that other lawmakers were “entitled to their opinion.”
Scott also pointed out that in recent years, the university has “steadily been getting better and better” at educating undergraduates and in its research areas. Sen. Wendy Schuler, R-Evanston, asked if the bill was brought forward by constituents.
“This was not a constituent bill … I would say it is more district-wide,” Rodriguez-Williams said. “I can tell you that being a parent of a high school student, and knowing many other parents in my district that provide input to their children as to where they should consider attending college, there is [discussion] of what experience other students have had” on campus that could steer parents away from UW.
“This bill allows for residents of Wyoming from across the state to elect representation on the UW Board of Trustees. It increases representation of the people and provides an opportunity for citizens of Wyoming to have a say in leadership of our beloved university,” she said.
But students on Monday said they’re the ones living on campus, directly feeling the impact of legislation this session.
“Parents across Wyoming, they’re not the ones on campus. It’s common for parents to say that university radicalizes kids, but I would not say that is the way it goes. Anyway, we’re the ones living there,” Katie Wilford, a UW undergraduate, told the WTE.
Pearson said she spoke last fall at least twice before the UW Board of Trustees about a campus-wide gun-free zones repeal, and felt heard in that process. Later, Pearson lay on the marble floor at the Capitol, quietly humming alongside fellow protesters.
Gomelsky said there was talk about “why there was not a permit for” the protest, but that she tried to obtain one and was told by the State Building Commission they do not issue permits for the Capitol lobby during the session.
“I do think the trustees listened to us,” Pearson said. “I think that we got through to them, and I am really hoping we can get through to (lawmakers) today. But we have realized that doing what we did with the UW trustees was not appealing to (lawmakers), so we are going to try something a little different.”
House Bill 148 passed in a 3-2 vote with a “do not pass” recommendation out of committee for debate on the Senate floor. Despite a majority of lawmakers saying they did not favor the bill, its fate will be left to the entire body to debate.
The fate of the gun-free zones repeal, however, is in the governor’s hands.
“It’s our lives at stake here,” first-year UW student Illyas Kahn said Monday.
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