The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 3 - 115

No Smoking Guns Here

recognized duty in reasonably ensuring a safe
environment for their students, faculty, staff,
and visitors. accordingly, higher education
institutions should be able to operate autonomously and promulgate reasonable regulations
that will mitigate the harm caused by firearms"
(miller, 2011, p. 263).
overall, there is limited research on firearms in residence halls. residence hall policies
vary from campus to campus, and prior court
interpretation may help clarify how campuses
should address the issues that may arise specific to firearms in residence halls. When creating campus policy, looking at arguments on
both sides of the issue should help guide the
policy making process. With further research,
the implications of campus-concealed carry
and how it applies to residence halls can assist
colleges and universities on how to proceed on
the issue. institutional leaders must interpret
and make sense of these legislative changes.
Within the context of residence halls, directors
of residence life are the institutional leaders
charged with developing a response and training teams on legislative matters.

THeOReTIcAL fRAMeWORK
Weick, sutcliffe, and obstfeld's (2005) process
of sensemaking provides an avenue for exploring how residence life directors understand and
interpret changes in state campus carry laws.
sensemaking as an organizing principle serves
a "central role in the determination of human
behavior" (p. 409) and interplays with how an
individual makes sense of a situation and influences a person's actions. Weick (1995) suggested that the need for sensemaking emerges
when individuals encounter discrepant events,
such as changes in laws, and are charged with

"authoring as well as interpretation, creation
as well as discovery" (p. 8). sensemaking processes provide an individual with a foundation
for how to interpret and process situations, and
involves attempts for understanding organizational behavior. in particular, the sensemaking
process provides insight into how people within
organizations interact with words (e.g., policy)
and the ways in which person-to-person interactions can serve as a tool for shaping behavior
(Weick et al., 2005). this theoretical perspective suggests that the ways in which a person
makes sense of their experiences is through
their interactions with different contexts. in
sum, a sensemaking perspective concerns
itself with "interplay of action and interpretation rather than the influence of evaluation on
choice" (p. 409).
as the interplay of sensemaking unfolds,
Weick et al., (2005) suggested two primary
questions capture the essence of the sensemaking process. first, "how does something come
to be an event for institutional members? (p.
410). second, "what does an event mean?" (p.
410). in addressing these questions, organizational members seek to understand retrospective experiences and social contexts that would
foreground how people understand organizational challenges. the ways in which an individual makes sense of fluctuation is through
an interpretation of their role within the specific organization. in this study, state lawmakers
have implemented fundamental changes to
college campuses and residence halls by legalizing campus carry laws. We specifically seek
to understand the ways in which an organizational leader-residence life directors-make
sense of these law changes and craft institutional policies responding to legal matters.

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 3

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