AMES — An audit is questioning whether Iowa State University President Steven Leath violated policy by storing and transporting firearms in campus housing and airplanes without written approvals.
A Board of Regents report says ISU has no documentation that Leath applied for and received waivers required to bring guns on school property. Leath stores firearms at the president’s mansion, the Knoll, and has brought them on university planes to hunt during fundraising trips.
University policy bans weapons, without advanced approvals for storage and transportation. The report says Leath received verbal approval to store weapons at the Knoll following a campus police inspection.
ISU says Leath believed that approval also applied to transportation and that documentation likely existed but couldn’t be found due to administrators’ retirements. Leath’s obtaining a new waiver.
The audit came after the Bleeding Heartland blog reported in November that Leath’s hunting trips likely violated the weapons policy.