As written in our mission statement, Naropa University is committed to supporting our students as they “explore the inner resources needed to engage courageously with a complex and challenging world, [and] to help transform that world through skill and compassion….” Naropa graduates have powerfully met that mission challenge for four decades.The shooting in Parkland, Florida is, tragically, just the most recent example of a culture of violence run wild. Naropa fully supports the student-led initiatives that are honestly and courageously taking on the gun lobby and fearlessly engaging those who would cynically conflate the need for reasonable means of protection from the actions of ill-intentioned aggressors with the unfettered creation of an unregulated armed society.Not since the protests against the war in Southeast Asia has the United States seen a student-led movement with such promise to spark a powerful social change. Just as was learned from the anti-war movement, when too often we attacked lower level members of the military who were compelled to serve and had no power to change policy, the current gun regulation movement needs to take care not to demonize well-intentioned, basically good individuals who are often from communities not like our own, and who are worried about their own safety and that of their loved ones. We should encourage the current focus on illuminating and criticizing our social failure to provide adequate mental health intervention and care, and to bravely calling out those who, based upon fear of losing political power and financial gain, have for decades created obstacles to the kind of reform to the gun culture needed to re-gain a level of social sanity.Naropa welcomes this student-led movement and offers our support, our advice when sought, and such resources as we can reasonably deploy in order for us to actively bear witness to the kind of changes that are so desperately needed.This movement has reached a point of resonance that has made it necessary for many institutions to assure current as well as potential students that participation in actions of protest or civil disobedience in response to gun violence in schools will not influence, change, or affect any student’s status or their potential acceptance by universities to which they have applied. Two such planned instances of civil disobedience that are currently scheduled are a “student walk-out” scheduled to last 17 minutes on March 14, 2018 and the March for Our Lives on March 24, 2018 in Washington, DC and across the country. Naropa supports these actions and will take necessary steps with faculty and staff to ensure that support is offered across the University. This type of activism is vital to both our mission and to the growth of courageous, conscientious, and compassionate human beings.Naropa is proud to add our voice to those of many other universities to assure any applicant that participation in peaceful protest or acts of civil disobedience will not impact our admissions decision, regardless of any misguided disciplinary actions that might be taken by high school administrators or others in positions of power.We owe a debt of gratitude for those students who, despite trauma and grief, saw an opportunity to energize a movement and speak out against aggression and greed so clearly and passionately. And who do so despite the efforts to mute their voices and question their motivation.  Naropa is proud to be aligned with this righteous cause.ChuckCharles G. LiefPresident