CONCEALED CARRY OK’D AT CEDARVILLE UNIVERSITY

Trustees make Cedarville University the first college in Ohio to let staff have guns on campus.

Cedarville University will allow concealed carry on campus, a change administrators say will make the campus safer despite its already low crime rate.

Cedarville’s board of trustees approved a policy on May 5 to allow licensed faculty, staff and trustees to carry a concealed handgun on campus, a first for any Ohio college. Concealed carry will be allowed beginning Aug. 1 and faculty, staff and trustees first have to apply for approval through the president’s office.

The decision comes as Gov. John Kasich signed a bill into law in December, allowing individual boards of trustees to decide whether concealed carry would be allowed on their campuses.

While the idea behind it is to better protect the campus, Cedarville president Thomas White acknowledged that the university has not “had any incidents of that nature.” The policy aligns with Cedarville University’s “run, hide, fight” policy when it comes to campus crime or attackers, White said.

“That last portion, fight, if it’s a last resort then you have the ability according to the constitution to protect yourself,” White said. “That’s the thought process.”

From 2013 to 2015, Cedarville University reported no incidents of murder, robbery, assaults or forcible sex acts on campus, according to annual campus safety reports. In that same time period the school reported just one incident of dating violence, seven incidents of stalking, 20 incidents of burglary and one hate crime, according to reports.

Students will still be prohibited from carrying concealed handguns on campus, officials said. Extending the policy to students, White said, could create some “unsafe scenarios.”

Concealed carry for students would bring up the issue of how to properly store a gun in a residence hall and whether a student would know how to clean a gun. A person must be 21-yearsold to obtain a concealed carry license, so “half of our student body would be ruled out immediately,” White said.

To avoid unsafe situations, White said the school will encourage employees who take advantage of the concealed carry policy to get

additional training, though it will not be required. White said officials investigated how likely accidents with concealed carry are and that experts told them they are minuscule.

“I think it’s my job to worry about everything happening but I don’t know that I’m more worried about that than other scenario,” White said. “We have a pretty safe faculty and staff.”

Most of Ohio’s public colleges have come out against allowing concealed carry on campus, including Ohio State University and Miami University. The University of Dayton has no plans to begin allowing concealed carry on campus while Wright State University trustees said they may further explore it next fall.

“Our campus community was comfortable with that not all schools will be, we get that, we understand that,” White said. “I don’t expect that a lot will follow and I don’t know that they should.”