Now that Texas legislators have passed a law allowing concealed weapons to be carried at colleges throughout the state, campus leaders, professors, students, and safety officials will turn to debating what areas of their campuses can be declared gun-free, and how much of each campus can be a designated a gun-free zone.
Administrators will have over a year to devise new policies to comply with the legislation, which the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, has said he will sign. Private colleges and universities will have the option of opting out of the requirement.
Many campus leaders and professors have voiced safety concerns about where concealed guns will be allowed. They worry, for instance, about permitting an upset student to carry a gun into a professor’s office. Many of the state’s public colleges opposed the legislation, with the University of Texas’ chancellor, William H. McRaven, a retired Navy SEAL, loudly leading the effort against it. Now he and other campus leaders will turn to crafting a policy they’ve said would harm their campuses.
At the last minute the bill was amended to let each college develop rules and regulations to carry out the law, and in a written statement Mr. McRaven called that provision “helpful.”
But it is unclear to what extent campuses can set up gun-free zones. The bill states that colleges and universities may not put in place regulations that would generally prevent licensed gun holders from carrying concealed weapons on a campus. But the legislation does not specify the types of buildings that can or cannot be gun-free zones.
State Sen. Brian Birdwell, who sponsored the bill, has said that the exemptions should be “specific and as minimalistic as possible,” and should not mark entire buildings as gun-free.
Faculty Fears
Faculty retention and recruitment are top concerns at Texas colleges, whose leaders worry that some professors might seek jobs at private colleges in the state, or leave the state altogether out of concern over guns on campuses.
“People feel strongly they’re putting themselves into danger,” said Andrea C. Gore, a pharmacology and toxicology professor at the University of Texas at Austin who is also the incoming chair of the university’s Faculty Council.
She said she would be surprised if classrooms were classified as gun-free zones, but anticipated that laboratories and spaces on health-science campuses would have more exemptions because of the hazardous materials they contain.
“They’re trying to limit the number of exemptions,” Ms. Gore said. “I trust presidents across campuses are going to be able to articulate reasons for why more exemptions might be better.”
James A. Conover, a finance professor and chair of the University of North Texas’ Faculty Senate, said that making professors feel comfortable on their campuses could be a challenge. In conversations since the legislation passed, he said, he has realized that professors will need to come to terms with the reality that students and colleagues could be armed in classes and meetings.
There’s an added level of tension when vocal opponents of the law are devising the policy to carry it out, said Gary J. Margolis, a co-founder of Margolis Healy, a firm that specializes in campus safety and security.
Community colleges will have an extra year to comply with the legislation before concealed guns are allowed in its campus buildings. Having that extra time to watch four-year institutions work out their policies could be beneficial, said Ray Laughter, vice chancellor for external affairs at the Lone Star College system.
Officials will look to legislators’ stated intentions when determining gun-free zones on campuses, Mr. Laughter said. And they should help students not to panic about the new policies.
“If this is going to be the law, we need to reach some level of awareness,” he said. “Part of it is training people and students about ‘this is what it means.’”
What Other States Have Done
Eight other states, but none as big as Texas, allow the concealed carrying of weapons on college campuses, and in some cases colleges in those states have been able to keep guns largely off their campuses.
In Wisconsin public colleges can bar concealed weapons from buildings if signs are placed at their entrances. And public colleges in Arkansas have opted out of allowing concealed guns since the state enacted legislation, in 2013, permitting faculty members to be armed.
Students and professors in Utah have been able to carry concealed weapons on public campuses for many years, and the policy is simply accepted at Southern Utah University, said Rick Brown, the university’s chief of police.
“They know when they come here that the situation has always been state law,” Mr. Brown said.
Public universities in Idaho took different stances on how to put in place campus-carry laws a year ago. While Boise State University built up campus security, the University of Idaho did not.
“Our general consensus was that the law itself did not create conditions that would make our campus or any university more dangerous,” said Matt Dorschel, the university’s executive director of public safety and security.
The university, like other large public institutions in the state, asked for more money to increase surveillance on the campus. Still, he said, in the year that the law has been in effect, there have been no significant gun-related incidents on his campus.
“It was more about building awareness,” Mr. Dorschel said, and now “people have settled into this.”
“That doesn’t mean that they’re supportive of the law,” he continued. “It just means that they understand it and that we’re all thankful that we haven’t had weapons-related incidents.”
