Create a free Diverse: Issues In Higher Education account to continue reading

Audit: No Proof Iowa State President had Waivers for Guns

AMES, Iowa — An audit is questioning whether Iowa State University President Steven Leath violated policy by storing and transporting firearms in campus housing and airplanes without written approvals.

A Board of Regents report says ISU has no documentation that Leath applied for and received waivers required to bring guns on school property.

Leath stores firearms at the president’s mansion, the Knoll, and has brought them on university planes to hunt during fundraising trips.

University policy bans weapons, without advanced approvals for storage and transportation. The report says Leath received verbal approval to store weapons at the Knoll following a campus police inspection.

ISU says Leath believed that approval also applied to transportation and that documentation likely existed but couldn’t be found due to administrators’ retirements. Leath’s obtaining a new waiver.

The audit came after the Bleeding Heartland blog reported in November that Leath’s hunting trips likely violated the weapons policy.

A New Track: Fostering Diversity and Equity in Athletics
American sport has always served as a platform for resistance and has been measured and critiqued by how it responds in critical moments of racial and social crises.
Read More
A New Track: Fostering Diversity and Equity in Athletics