Campus officials answered questions and concerns of guests present at a meeting Wednesday on the issue of arming campus police.

Jerry Stewart, director of the department of public safety, and Warren Madden, vice president for business and finance, led the forum and recommended that ISU Police officers carry firearms.

Stewart said there was a confusion on who would be actually carrying firearms.

“We’re talking about the 31 officers who’ve been through police academy and are state-certified,” Stewart said.

He said firearms would not be carried by the parking division or any student volunteer.

State Sen. Herman Quirmbach, associate professor of economics, didn’t agree with the idea of arming campus officials.

“We have to address three questions,” said Quirmbach. “The first question is: What is the level of the threat? Second, what is the effectiveness as a response of the proposal of the boards today? And third: What are the downside risks associated with this proposal?”

Quirmbach said the decision needs to be made based on probability rather than possibility. With more than 20 million college students in the nation, fewer than 10 students per year have been murdered on college campuses this decade, he said.

“The chances of being murdered on campus are about as likely as being fatally struck by lightning,” Quirmbach said.

He said most of those murders were drug deals gone bad or events where police are unlikely to be present.

Madden said almost every university of Iowa State’s size has armed officers.

“We believe it’s appropriate they have the tools that other officer agencies have,” Madden said.

Madden said ISU officials were armed prior to the 1960s, but during the Vietnam era, and especially after the Kent State shooting, guns were taken away from campus officials.

Stewart said no ISU Police officer has ever been shot and the last shooting on campus was in the 1980s when a student tried shooting at the dean of the Design College.

He said the last murder on campus was in the 1950s.

“If we need to have police, then we should be armed,” said ISU Police Cmdr. Gene Deisinger.

Deisinger said officers make decisions based on possibility and it’s hard to judge when to have a firearm and when not to, even though the situation of needing one would most likely never arise.

“The bottom line here is, the risk is very small, the likeliness of the effectiveness of this response is dim, and the downside risk is indeed present,” Quirmbach said. “Arming the cops at Virginia Tech wouldn’t have helped.