Some Texas Faculty Members Wonder if They Can Keep Guns Out of Their Offices

Jay Jenner, Austin American-Statesman, AP Images

When Texas’ campus-carry law was approved, gun opponents at Texas A&M University’s flagship campus, in College Station, were relieved to find that they’d have the option of keeping their offices weapon-free, as long as they could make a convincing case to the administration. But a week after the law took effect and just three weeks before classes start, there’s no evidence that any requests have been answered and no timetable for making those decisions.

The new law allows people age 21 and over who have concealed-carry licenses to bring guns into most buildings on public-college campuses. Individual institutions were given some leeway to carve out exclusion zones; the University of Texas at Austin, for instance, generally bans weapons from dormitories, while Texas A&M University does not.

Allowing faculty and staff members with private offices to declare their spaces off-limits to firearms has been a consolation prize of sorts to those who feel uncomfortable around potentially armed students.

“That was the sliver of sanity visible in the whole situation,” says Patrick Burkart, a professor of communication on the College Station campus.

He became discouraged, however, when he learned the hoops the university’s policy required him to jump through, including a form that would need to be approved by the president and three other administrators.

According to the form, exclusions would be considered for offices where a gun “presents a significant risk of substantial harm due to a negligent discharge.”

Exclusions would also be considered for “research areas with high-risk human subjects,” like those with psychological disorders, and “research areas containing high-hazard materials or operations.”

Mr. Burkart says that, like other faculty members in the humanities, he often deals with combustible material, but maybe not the kind the administration had in mind.

“I asked around to see if there had been any successful applications yet using that form, and no one could identify one. The only example I was given was a lab setting in which a bullet might hit a propane tank, causing an explosion,” Mr. Burkart says. “If I need to wheel a tank of oxygen into my office, I will probably do that.”

A Slow-Paced Process

On a more serious note, he and other gun opponents are considering holding office hours only on Skype or moving them to areas where guns are banned.

The Chronicle has been attempting to learn for several weeks how many requests for gun-free offices the university has received, what kinds of concerns are being raised, and how many have been approved. The university promised to answer an open-records request by August 15.

The inquiries were bounced to the media-relations office, then to Christopher M. Meyer, the assistant vice president for safety and security, and the chair of Texas A&M’s 22-member campus-carry task force.

In an email last week, he said he had no information on those questions, and expected requests to continue coming in over the next several months. “Each request must work its way up the organization for final approval,” he wrote. “The requests do not have a submission deadline, nor do they have a deadline for approval.”

A few faculty members, who asked not to be identified because they didn’t want to draw attention to themselves on this hot-button issue, expressed frustration at the slow pace.

In a message to faculty members last week, Pamela R. Matthews, dean of liberal arts at College Station, said university rules required faculty members to get approval from their department head and then from her before a request could be forwarded to the president. Her understanding is that those requests will be approved only in “rare circumstances.”

It’s impossible to know how many people at Texas A&M want guns banned from their offices. The faculty is generally considered more conservative than its counterpart at the University of Texas, where opposition to the new law was much more vocal.

Some faculty members at Texas A&M worry that once they state their cases in writing, they expose themselves to open-records requests that might be filed by gun-rights and other conservative organizations.

“All they have to do is scoop up the requests and sort through them, and they have a ready-made campaign,” says Mr. Burkart.

To the Courts

Among the groups that have aggressively opposed efforts to weaken the state gun law are Students for Concealed Carry. The group on Thursday filed a complaint with the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, challenging options for gun-free offices at the University of Texas’ campuses in Austin and San Antonio.

Such exclusions, the group said, violate the spirit of the state law, making it nearly impossible for faculty members or graduate students who go in and out of different offices every day to carry concealed weapons.

Unlike at Texas A&M, faculty members who wish to ban weapons from private offices at Austin can simply inform their students in class. Posting signs is optional, and no special permission is needed.

While the debate continues over which offices can be declared off-limits, allowing guns in classrooms is pretty much a given statewide, at least for now.

Public universities have generally taken the position that banning guns in classrooms would violate the intent of the law.

But a federal judge is mulling a request by three Austin professors for a court order that would allow them to temporarily block concealed handguns from their classrooms. Guns, they argue, could have a chilling effect on free speech. The state’s chief law-enforcement officer, Mr. Paxton, has called their lawsuit “frivolous” and said it should be tossed out.

Mr. Burkart, at Texas A&M, is watching that case closely.

“There’s a good chance,” he says, “if the judge rules in favor of workplace safety, that we won’t have to be filling out any more forms.”

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.