UT: Guns in classrooms, not dorms
Exception for residence halls rankles backers of law; critics threaten suit
AUSTIN — Concealed handguns would be banned in most dormitories but not in classrooms under campus carry rules announced Wednesday by University of Texas at Austin President Gregory Fenves, who called the decision “the greatest challenge of my presidency to date.”
The decision — UT-- Austin is the largest state school to set its rules so far — appears to conflict with a nonbinding legal opinion issued two months ago by Attorney General Ken Paxton, a divergence that promises to ratchet up the politically charged debate by both supporters and opponents.
Paxton and other top state officials who have supported campus carry in the past offered no immediate comment on Fenves’ decision.
Within hours of Fenves’ announcement, supporters and critics took issue with the decision and said lawsuits are likely before the fight over the new law
is resolved.
With the state’s conservative Republican leadership lined up in support of gun rights and university officials generally opposed to allowing guns on campuses, the outcome of UT’s decision on its campus carry had been anticipated for months.
Officials at Texas A&M University, where concealed weapons already are permitted in some areas, are working on their own open carry policy, after Chancellor John Sharp earlier expressed support for it.
Highlighting the growing tension on the issue, two graduate students who support a gun-free campus interrupted an afternoon briefing on the new rules by shouting at Fenves.
“No confidence in Greg Fenves,” hollered Robert Oxford, a graduate student who teaches writing and is a representative in the Graduate Student Assembly. “He won’t do what he believes is right. He won’t come out and make the tough decision. That’s a question of his leadership.”
‘Significant concerns’
Fenves acknowledged he is uncomfortable with guns on campus but said thenew law gave him little choice but to approve the recommendations of a task force he named last year to study implementation.
“I have significant concerns about how the law will affect our ability to recruit and retain faculty and students,” Fenves wrote of the new rules in a letter to UT System Chancellor William McRaven, his boss.
In a message on Twitter, McRaven, who previously said he preferred not having guns on campuses but understood that the Legislature had made the decision to allow them, said: “It’s a challenging task but reps from all UT schools are working hard to both follow the law and protect the campus environment.”
Under the new rules, concealed guns will be allowed in classrooms and dining halls but prohibited in most university dorms and residence halls, laboratories, and specifc classrooms and areas that host programs for pre-K through 12th grade. Faculty members and employees with private offices will be able to designate them as gun-free zones, but offices regularly open to the public will not.
Per Texas law, campus carry is limited to persons with a state license to carry a handgun, which requires holders to be at least 21.
The rules laid out by Fenves also would require that someone carrying a semi-automatic weapon not have a round of ammunition in the chamber, and that holsters completely cover triggers to prevent accidental firings.
“I do not believe handguns belong on a university campus, so this decision has been the greatest challenge of my presidency to date,” Fenves said ina statement emailed to students and faculty. “However, as president, I have an obligation to uphold the law.”
And while he personally disagreed with allowing guns in classrooms, Fenves wrote, “under the law, I cannot adopt a policy that has the general effect of excluding licensed concealed handguns from campus. ... A classroom exclusion would have this effect.”
Fenves said UT lawyers believe the ban on guns in dorms and residence halls is legal, despite Paxton’s declaration last December that public universities may violate the new campus carry law by prohibiting handguns there. Paxton’s office said Wednesday that the ruling speaks for itself.
Fenves said he believes the new law allows UT discretion in regulating firearms in university housing.
While some residence halls will be gun-free zones under the new law, Fenves said, guns will be allowed at some apartment-style residences.
“On the whole, we felt we were balancing the requirements of the law with the specific safety issues of students predominantly under 21andina shared living situation,” he said.
Under Senate Bill 11, signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott last June, students 21 and older will be allowed to carry concealed handguns across much of the campus for the first time if theyhave a state handgun license. Concealed handguns are now permitted in certain public and common areas, but not inside buildings. The law takes effect Aug. 1 for the state’s public universities.
Open carry will remain illegal on university campuses.
Debate continues
The campus carry law has generated both protests and applause ina state where gun rights rank as a top priority for a conservative electorate, despite almost unanimous opposition from top university officials who have insisted that guns pose an unwelcome and dangerous presence that will compromise the learning environment.
Supporters had complained that gun-free designations for colleges and universities violated their Second Amendment rights.
Private universities, which under the law retain the option of barring weapons, have said they would not allow guns on their campuses. Baylor University in Waco was the latest, opting out on Tuesday.
Fenves said the university’s board of regents can amend the rules by a twothirds vote within 90 days. He said the rules could be changed if problems arose.
C.J. Grisham, founder of Open Carry Texas, generally praised the UT rec- ommendations are good but said the ban on guns in dorms is “not going to fly.”
“When you ban guns in dorms, where else is a lawabiding citizen supposed to keep their guns — in their car?” he said. “As a bad guy, all I have to do is wait until you put your gun in your car, and then I break into your car and I have a gun.”
Joan Neuberger, history professor and a member of Gun Free UT, criticized Fenves and McRaven for not banning guns from classrooms and for not putting someone from her organization on the committee. She said her organization is considering legal action to keep guns off the UT campus.
In contrast, Madison Yandell, president of College Republicans at UT, said her group generally is pleased with guns being allowed in classrooms and accepts the dorm prohibition and the requirement that holster full cover the trigger.
However, she criticized “gun-free” zones in offices and requiring semiautomatic handguns to be carried without a chambered round. “It forces one to draw their weapon and then load the first round, which is a serious impediment to being able to quickly react,” she said.
Xavier Rotnofsky, student government president and a member of the Campus Carry Working Group, said the new rules are workable.
“This is the outcome of wanting to keep the campus as safe as possible while understanding the limits placed on us by the Texas Legislature,” he said.