Here at Henderson State University, we are in the second weekend of a popular theatre production of “Death Trap,” in which blanks are fired during the performance, and actors are murdered onstage by a variety of methods.

As a student reviewer wrote in last week’s edition of The Oracle, our campus newspaper, “The set was absolutely beautiful. The massive amounts of lethal weapons are an excellent touch, adding little hints of fear to the audience.”

The idea that the president of another university in this state would ban a similar performance because of the presence of blank guns strikes me as an absurd affront to the arts, higher education and all that public universities stand for. The arts have always offered society healing from tragedy, as well as an intellectual touchstone for analyzing errors and avoiding future tragedy. To ban an artistic performance because of a recent tragedy is not only misguided, but ignorant, especially if the ban is issued by someone charged with defending higher education from the forces of ignorance.

It has already been widely published that the film “American Gangster” has been shown on your campus during the same period the play was scheduled for performance, undoubtedly with Dolby sound making the gunfire just as loud for passers-by as the blank shots in “Assassins” would have been.

My question for President Brown, were I a student or faculty member at your institution, would be whether he is also planning to remove not only the violent movies from the student union, but the incredibly violent works of Homer and Shakespeare from the library, the violent works of Michelangelo from the art building, and the violent history of western civilization from the classroom.

You might expect this sort of simpleminded overreaction to a theatrical work from a junior high school principal, but never from a university president. I hope cooler, better informed minds at your institution will ultimately prevail.