Campus carry unrest fades in Texas
But some UT instructors find alternative sites for office hours
AUSTIN — Mark Sheridan says he can’t shake the scenario in his head: a student, anxious or angry, suddenly waving a gun in his office.
“It’s not a moment-tomoment terror, but there is a lingering cloud,” said Sheridan, an English doctoral student who also teaches at the University of Texas at Austin.
After Texas began allowing concealed carry license holders to bring handguns on campus last summer, Sheridan and several other UT graduate students moved their office hours with students to local bars including the Cactus Cafe, a quiet place tucked in the university student center. The reason is simple: It’s illegal to bring a firearm into a venue that primarily serves alcohol.
Their decision was done quietly and with few objections. The same could be said about concealed carry at universities across Texas, where there have been few protests or incidents since the law went into effect in August — a stark contrast to the strong emotions and demonstrations that punctuated debate before the legislation was approved in 2015.
Many college leaders, faculty and students protested against the law. They feared it would cause gun violence and intimidation, especially in the classroom. But universities across the state have
seen nothing of the kind.
In fact, six months under the law, there have been reports of only three firearm discharges on Texas public college campuses, according to interviews and a Houston Chronicle review of university records. Just one had a connection to the new campus carry law.
“(It) was, for the most part, a non-event,” said John Sharp, chancellor of the Texas A&M University System. “Why people thought eligible students who act responsibly in the community would act irresponsibly on campus was beyond me.”
Bar ‘the safest bet’
Many college students have moved on to other issues, including the surprise election of President Donald Trump. Campus carry appears to have faded from the minds of Texas faculty and students.
“I don’t think, ‘Does that guy have a gun in his backpack?’” said Nicholas Gonzales, a University of Houston junior studying mechanical engineering. “Now that it’s a law, I don’t think anyone puts too much thought in it.”
At UT, though, where a demonstration in August drew campus carry opponents carrying sex toys, public opposition still remains. Some professors hang anti-gun posters in their windows. Others post their opposition on social media occasionally. There’s a pending federal lawsuit brought by three UT professors who unsuccessfully tried to block the law from going into effect. And twice a week, in the Cactus Cafe,
Sheridan meets with students in his spring class — Rhetoric of U.S. Exceptionalism.
“If I want to work at a place that bans guns,” Sheridan said recently, “the bar seems like the safest bet for me.”
Graduate students at UT share offices and cannot bar guns from those rooms, though faculty can keep guns out of their offices.
University leaders say graduate students have long been permitted to hold office hours off campus. “The university did not track it then, and that did not change with the new law,” UT spokesman J.B. Bird said.
But gun advocates say the practice violates the spirit of campus carry.
“You’re usurping the intent of the Legislature. You are a graduate teaching assistant, an employee of the state, and your work should be performed … on state property,” said Michael Newbern, a spokesman for Students for Concealed Carry.
Lynn Cowles, the events manager of local bar Hole in the Wall, brought the idea to the graduate student assembly.
It’s hard for students to seek academic help in a place like Hole in the Wall, which has a busy lunch
hour and live music starting at 7 p.m., said Cowles, who earned her doctorate in philosophy from UT in December 2015. On a recent afternoon, rock music played behind the bar, and a few customers leaned over red stools held together by black duct tape to pay for refills of the beers on tap.
To Cowles, the drawbacks of meeting with students in a bar pale in comparison to the prospect of a student carrying a concealed weapon into an instructor’s office on campus.
“It’s not a professional space for academics, but this is the environment we’re working with right now on campus,” she said.
Chills ‘freedom of expression’
Texas college officials can’t track how many students are carrying guns on campuses because gun license holders are only required to disclose that they have a license to a member of law enforcement or to a magistrate.
Gonzales, the UH junior, said he knows two students with the permits, but neither often carries a gun.
Still, some university leaders worry about the lingering negative effects on recruitment of top faculty and students.
Former UH faculty senate president Jonathan Snow said each of the roughly six candidates he interviewed for faculty or administrative positions in the fall asked him about the law.
He explained to them that the state Legislature forced this statute upon UH and the university has “written the best rules that we can” within state guidelines.
“It’s a tough one to respond to,” Snow said. “I’m pretty sure that the faculty opinion hasn’t really changed that much. Guns will never be an acceptable part of university life.”
At UT, Fritz Steiner, dean of the architecture school resigned last year, citing campus carry in his decision to take a job at the University of Pennsylvania.
Ian Becker, 27, a UT grad student who studies community and regional planning, said he was aware of Steiner’s decision to leave the school that oversees his program before he decided to enroll.
Campus carry “fundamentally chills academic freedom of expression,” Becker said, citing Steiner’s departure.
Two Texas A&M University faculty members also named campus carry as reasons for leaving. Student attitudes in College Station, however, have been more friendly to the law. Several years before it was enacted, elected student leaders passed a “personal protection act” that urged university and state leaders to pass legislation or policy allowing concealed guns on campus.
At A&M, the presence of the Corps of Cadets makes the campus more gun-friendly, said anthropology professor Michael Alvard, who realizes that he’s in the minority as a liberal-leaning faculty member.
Cody Nedbalek, an A&M graduate student studying biological and agricultural engineering, said he knows friends who carry a gun to class, and he plans to get his concealed carry license this summer. With the university’s military friendly culture, he said many students “aren’t scared of guns. They’re not uncomfortable if they see them.”
‘Not a traditional office’
Students at UT said the law crosses their mind occasionally, like when they walk through campus at night or see someone wearing a hooded sweatshirt in hot weather.
Freshman Maddy Moore, 18, said she initially sought to attend an East Coast college, partly because of the freedom to carry guns on Texas campuses.
Moore, of San Antonio, said her parents were worried about it when she moved into her apartment off campus.
Her father, a hunter, asked her many times if she wanted a gun in her apartment for self-defense. Moore has declined so far.
For UT student Julie Potrykus, 19, of College Station, adapting to campus carry meant getting used to meeting Sheridan, one of her class instructors, at the Cactus Cafe for office hours.
“It can seem different, because it’s not in a traditional office,” Potrykus said, “but we were still focused on the content at hand.”