Proposal to Allow Concealed Guns in Classrooms Leaves Texas Faculty Wary

A task force’s recommendation on Thursday that concealed guns be permitted in classrooms at the University of Texas at Austin left many people there leery about how the university will obey a controversial new state law allowing such weapons to be carried into buildings on college campuses.

That suggestion was part of a report by a 19-member panel of faculty, staff, and students that had been appointed by the university’s president, Gregory L. Fenves. The group recommended that guns be banned from dormitory rooms and certain laboratories, but the proposal to allow them in classrooms disappointed professors who wanted to make all such settings gun-free zones.

Doing so, the panel concluded, would probably violate the intent of the legislation, which was approved last spring.

Colleges were given some leeway to make “reasonable rules and regulations” about how the law would be carried out as long as those rules didn’t effectively prevent licensed gun owners from bringing guns to campuses.

Members of the Austin panel, called the Campus Carry Policy Working Group, also concluded that requiring students to check their guns into lockers scattered throughout the campus could be even more dangerous.

“Every time a handgun is transferred into a locker, there’s a danger of an accidental discharge,” Steven J. Goode, the law professor who led the committee, said in an interview on Thursday. “If students are in a hurry on their way to class, that’s almost a recipe for an accidental discharge.”

The “campus carry” law, Senate Bill 11, will allow properly licensed gun owners to bring their firearms into classrooms, dormitories, and other campus buildings statewide. The chancellor of the University of Texas system, William H. McRaven, a former U.S. Navy admiral, opposed the measure, as did the American Association of University Professors and three other national education associations.

The law will take effect on August 1, 2016 — 50 years to the day since a student named Charles Whitman shot 46 people from the University of Texas tower, killing 14 of them.

Private colleges can opt out of complying with SB 11. So far, five have and five more are considering doing so. No private colleges have opted in. Community colleges have an extra year before the law kicks in on their campuses.

The working group at Austin was given the task of advising the president on how and where, within the limits of the law, students should be able to carry concealed weapons on the flagship’s campus.

The proposal the panel released on Thursday contains 25 suggestions. Guns would have to be in holsters, even when they were in backpacks or purses. Concealed-carry permit holders who brought guns onto the campus would have to have the weapons with them at all times, or locked inside a vehicle, to minimize the chances that the weapons would be lost or stolen.

The group also recommended, among the other things, that:

• Handguns not be allowed in on-campus residence halls, except in some common areas or when parents with gun licenses were visiting their children.
• Employees with their own offices be able to decide whether or not to allow guns in those spaces.
• Guns be banned from campus health centers, child-care facilities, athletic events, and certain laboratories where chemical explosions could occur.

The Classroom Question

Such precautions did little to placate those who had been pushing the panel for months to defy lawmakers and refuse to allow guns in classrooms.

“I’m saddened at the report’s lack of courage,” Javier Auyero, a professor of Latin American sociology, wrote in an email to The Chronicle. “Guns do not belong in classrooms. Once this is official policy, I plan to inform every single job applicant and every single graduate student about it. This will irremediably hurt the university. Maybe that’s what proponents of this regressive law wanted.”

In its report, the working group agreed that guns and classrooms are a bad mix, but panel members said, essentially, that their hands were tied.

“Every member of the working group — including those who are gun owners and license holders — thinks it would be best if guns were not allowed in classrooms,” the report says. “Nevertheless, the working group does not recommend that classrooms should be designated a gun-exclusion zone.”

The report follows three months of study, thousands of collected comments, and two public meetings at which opponents of the law far outnumbered supporters.

Even though the legislation states that guns should be allowed in dormitories, banning them there shouldn’t be a problem, Mr. Goode said, because only about 1 percent of students who are 21 or older — the minimum age to have a gun permit — live on the campus.

“The working group is keenly aware of the sentiment on campus,” Mr. Goode said in a message to the university on Thursday. “We strived to forge recommendations that will promote safety on campus in a way that complies with the law.”

A campus leader who opposes the law said she was not surprised by the outcome.

“I know the faculty are disappointed that concealed handguns will be allowed in classrooms, but I think everyone realized that banning them would have effectively meant you couldn’t carry guns on campus,” said Hillary Hart, a distinguished senior lecturer in civil engineering and secretary of the General Faculty and the Faculty Council.

State Sen. Brian Birdwell, a Republican who sponsored the campus-carry bill, wrote a letter last month to the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, expressing concern that banning guns in dormitories or in most classrooms, as many faculty members were advocating, would violate the spirit of the law. He did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

Ms. Hart said she was pleased that the panel had called for more focus on mental health and for research on the connection between the ability to carry guns and violence.

The recommendations drew a rebuke from Colin Goddard, who was shot four times during the deadly rampage at Virginia Tech in 2007.

“Having survived the deadliest mass shooting in our country’s history while I was in college, I know that guns have no place on a university campus,” Mr. Goddard wrote in an email. While he’s glad the working group recommended keeping guns out of dorms and offices, he said he wished the panel had heeded the worries of those who wanted them banned from classrooms.

Mr. Fenves, who can revise the recommendations before submitting them to the Board of Regents for approval, thanked the committee for its work. He added that he was concerned about reports that a gun-rights group not affiliated with the university was planning a mock mass shooting near the campus this weekend.

“Such attitudes have no place at UT, and they reinforce my deep concerns about SB 11 and the potential impact that handguns will have on campus,” he said in a written statement. “However, I have a responsibility to implement the law and will do so in a way that addresses the safety of our community.”

Complaints From Gun-Rights Advocates

Gun-rights advocates had their own complaints about the recommendations.

The most significant was the recommendation that semiautomatic handguns be carried without a chambered round of ammunition.

That, said Antonia Okafor, the Southwest regional director of Students for Concealed Carry, “flies in the face of the accepted best practices taught by every shooting school, police academy, and military branch in America.”

Someone needing to defend himself will waste valuable time having to reload, she said.

Texas law already allows licensed gun owners to carry handguns on public-college grounds. What’s different about the new law is that it extends that policy into most campus buildings, including dorms, classrooms, and laboratories.

Still, there will be plenty of room for confusion, said Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, a professor of history.

“This is a law that, no matter how carefully and thoughtfully it might be implemented, spawns paradoxes and legal challenges at every turn,” he wrote in an email. “The committee served us well by demonstrating the dozens of legal contradictions and likely legal challenges that the law will trigger. The courts will be busy.”

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.