As Washington University prepares to hold the first event of a year-long focus on gun violence, the chancellor and his wife, whose experiences sparked the initiative, seem to be at odds over the mission.

Chancellor Mark Wrighton says that the University is not pursuing a legislative agenda against guns, but instead is trying to find a way to make firearms safer.

“We have to respect the fact that the Second Amendment provides the opportunity for anyone who wants to have a gun to have one,” Wrighton said in an interview.

Risa Zwerling Wrighton, his wife, came up with the initiative after a student she had been tutoring for seven years was shot and killed. She said she does intend for the initiative to have a political agenda.

“Our goals include getting legislation passed, but that is just one prong of a multi-pronged approach,” Zwerling Wrighton said in an interview last month with Student Life.

Which approach the university will take may begin to become clear at the initiative’s first event on Tuesday, April 21.

Sponsored by the Brown School of Social Work, the first event aims to identify what is already known about the factors that drive injury and death from gun violence in the United States.

“What we’re striving to do is to overcome the challenge that is so evident just from reading the newspaper every day,” Wrighton said. “We see accidental deaths, we see suicides, we see violence in our community and we need to explore ways of lessening the chance of death and injury from firearms.”

He compared this issue to that of drunken driving in previous decades, which he said were reduced by crackdowns and safety equipment. As of 2013, the number of traffic deaths per 100,000 people has been more than cut in half since 1980.

“We’re trying to raise people’s consciousness to the scale of this crisis,” Wrighton said.

A key administrator in organizing the initiative seemed to echo Wrighton’s perspective. Dr. William Powderly, director of the Washington University Institute for Public Health—which is coordinating the initiative—says that the issue needs to be addressed in terms of societal well-being.

“It’s a public health issue—we have many people dying prematurely from something we can do things about,” Powderly said. “What we’re talking about is recognizing that people have certain rights and responsibilities. How do we create a knowledgeable society that manages so that fewer people die needlessly?”

Powderly says that over the course of the initiative there might not be an immediate, tangible change, but foresees the initiative making an impact on the mindset the University community has about the issue. He also says he hopes that the initiative might help identify solutions that could be applied to the St. Louis community.

“Do I expect that at the end of one year we have a major policy change and that there will be new legislation?” Powderly added. “I think that’s unlikely. But if we create an environment in which people start to talk about that, then you can see the road to where policy may change in a direction that benefits everyone: recognizing people’s rights, but actually recognizing individual responsibility.”

Currently all seven schools of the University are involved in the Institute of Public Health, but not all have been incorporated into the year-long series. Although the three major partners as of now are the Brown School of Social Work, the School of Medicine and the School of Law, with each sponsoring one of the events, Powderly hopes each school will take a role over the course of the year.

Still, Zwerling Wrighton maintains that she expects something more than panel discussions and community education from the initiative.

“I would hope there would be something a little bit more concrete,” Zwerling Wrighton said. “The hope would be that [students] are going to see it coming and going and that we’re going to raise everyone’s consciousness and by the end of the year, come up with something we can do.”

Next Tuesday’s panel will be entitled “Gun Violence: A Public Health Crisis,” the event will feature keynote speaker Dr. Alan Leshner, CEO emeritus of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Additionally there will be a panel consisting of James Clark, vice president of Better Family Life; Bo Kennedy, professor of pediatrics at the Washington University School of Medicine; Becky Morgan, head of the St. Louis Chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America; and Nancy Staudt, dean of the Washington University School of Law.

Leschner was chosen for his work on the publication of “The Gun Violence Public Health Crisis: What it means and what we need to do.” Additionally, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay has been invited as special guest to give the opening remarks.