Campus carry at UT likely headed to court
When it comes to campus carry, University of Texas President Gregory L. Fenves has his work cut out for him.
Over the past few months, attention has been focused on the university’s working group, which was charged with developing recommendations for the implementation of Senate Bill 11, otherwise known as the campus carry law signed by Gov. Greg Abbott this spring. The two publicized public hearings resulted in more than 400 speakers at a UT forum, more than 3,000 comments on an online survey and dozens of campus demonstrations. But at the end of the day, Fenves is going to have to decide how to implement the controversial law that allows concealed handgun license holders to carry holstered firearms on campus grounds.
The recommendations provided Thursday by the 19-member working group gives Fenves a solid starting point. But on the thornier issues — including the presence of firearms in dorms or classrooms — he is now faced with the responsibility to craft a policy that will not only pass muster with the UT System regents and Texas Legislature, but also avoid an outright revolt by the university’s faculty. Frankly, the odds of success are slim on that count.
Thousands of faculty, students and staff members have joined the group Gun Free UT, which on Thursday threatened to sue the university if firearms were permitted in classrooms. In a statement, the group reit- erated that the purpose of the university is to educate, saying, “Allowing guns in the classroom undermines that purpose by chilling free speech and infringing on academic freedom. The report has utterly failed to recommend policies that will protect these treasured traditions. We will defend our First Amendment rights by every legal means possible.”
Even the law’s staunchest supporters are not likely to disagree that allowing firearms in the school’s facilities — its nuclear lab, mental health clinics, sporting events, laboratories with hazardous chemicals, courtrooms at the School of Law and areas that deal with children — are not places where firearms should be carried by the public.
But the working group’s attempt to distinguish between the rights of visiting parents (“yes” to campus carry), married students living in dorms (“yes” to campus carry) and the rest of the student housing population (absolutely not) is much murkier waters.
Though much of the debate has focused on the undergraduate population, nearly 53 percent of the total student population at the university is over the age of 21 — and thus eligible to apply for a concealed handgun permit. While the average age of students living in university housing skews younger — only 313 contract holders this fall were over 21 — off-campus students participate in study groups, social events and oth- er dormitory activities, which makes application of the recommendations by the working group impractical. The likelihood of a CHL holder checking a weapon before entering a dorm room seems implausible at best.
The report does recommend that common areas inside student housing be treated as legal campus carry zones, but it also points out the presence of a sizable number of students under the age of 18 who also live there, as well as the impracticality of securing weapons in an environment where only 2 percent of rooms are designated as single-occupancy.
In fact, practicality is the primary reasoning for the group’s recommendation to allow concealed firearms in the classroom environment. According to the report: “The primary on-campus activity for most of our more than 50,000 students is going to class. Excluding handguns from classrooms would have the effect of generally prohibiting license holders from carrying their handguns and so would violate S.B. 11.”
Faculty have made it clear they are willing to fight for the right to have gun-free classrooms.
One professor already has said he plans to retire rather than continue to teach, while dozens of UT academic departments and faculty council members have lodged their opposition to allowing guns in classroom areas.
The American-Statesman editorial board has long maintained that campus carry is a bad idea, in part because of the potential for confusion and the unnecessary burden that it will place on officials charged with keeping the entire campus safe. More guns will not make campuses safer. University officials did not ask for this law. Private universities like Rice, Southern Methodist University and Texas Christian University believe that campus carry is such a bad idea that they have opted out entirely — but public universities do not have that choice.
Even if, in the end, campus carry opponents’ worst fears do not come to fruition, there is a cost to implementing SB 11: distraction from the educational mission, time and resources spent on signage, training and implementation, and very likely steep legal bills. Because no matter what Fenves ultimately decides, it’s fairly certain that campus carry is headed to court.