JOHN C.

CULVER
MARY JANE CHECCHI

January 30, 2016

Ms. Sunnie Richer
Chair
Simpson College Board of Trustees
Dear Ms. Richer:
We want to express our gratitude for your service as a Trustee at Simpson College. During the
past six years, as we have come to know the Simpson community faculty, administration,
students, alumnae we have developed great respect and affection for the College. We are
especially proud to be associated with an institution with a deserved reputation for tolerance and
civic engagement, qualities that promote civil discourse and a positive environment for
intellectual growth.
Thus we were dismayed to learn that, for a $10,000 grant from the National Shooting Sports
Foundation (NSSF), Simpson has agreed to formally establish a Gun Club on campus and hire a
fulltime shooting coach. We know that in Iowa young people often learn to handle firearms, to
shoot and to hunt. We also know that, a few years ago, students organized an informal gun club
on campus which, assuming prudent safety rules, should not pose problems.
But the NSSF, the trade and lobbying association for the firearms industry, is not concerned with
the education of students or the reputation of a college. Its job is to promote the sale of guns and
oppose legislative or government initiatives it disapproves of. It spends more money lobbying
than the National Rifle Association (NRA). In concert with the NRA, it has undertaken a
campaign to establish gun clubs on college campuses. Both the NRA and the NSSF provide
how to booklets to anyone wishing to establish a campus gun club. Neither organization hides
the fact that this is a strategy intended to further a long term commercial and political agenda.
The NSSF and the NRA are strident, intolerant, highly political organizations. The web site of
the NSSF includes political fact sheets that are incendiary, biased and often flagrantly
dishonest. For Simpson to ally itself with and to allow itself to be used by such groups
reflects poorly on Simpson and is sadly inconsistent with the Colleges mission and values.
This is doubly true in the context of recent, tragic, mass shootings in our country,
This context, and the politics of the NSSF and the NRA, mean that establishing a gun club at
Simpson is not a neutral sports event; it is not the same as establishing a lacrosse club. The
NSSF does not intend it to be neutral; its promotion of gun clubs on campus is part of a political
strategy a strategy that can be ignored by large universities that accept NSSF grants, because a

gun club is but one of hundreds of extracurricular activities, and in several instances the club
itself predates by a hundred years or more the NRA and NSSF.
Establishing a gun club with support from the NSSF makes a political statement, with the
potential to draw Simpson into an acrimonious political debate. The additional fact that a
fulltime shooting coach will be hired is disturbing: with financial resources scarce, couldnt these
funds more appropriately be dedicated to an academic pursuit? And, we find it hard to believe
suggestions that the shooting coach will help recruit students to Simpson. Surely, at least some
prospective students and their families are likely to be repelled by the existence of a formal gun
club and the employment of a full time shooting coach. We vociferously argue that Simpson has
much more to offer, and much more to be proud of, than a gun club when recruiting.
In closing: we know that every Trustee has Simpsons best interests at heart, and that there are
many challenging aspects to serving as a Trustee, ranging from fundraising to public relations, to
budgeting, academics, staffing, and quality of campus life and more. We hope that the Board
of Trustees will give serious consideration to returning the NSSF grant and will re-evaluate the
decision to hire a shooting coach.
Again, we thank you for all that you do for Simpson.
Best personal regards,

John C. Culver

Mary Jane Checchi