Committee: No plans yet for campus carry
Rhiannon Saegert | Senior Staff Writer
The committee creating concealed handgun policies for UNT met for the first time last week to begin hashing out plans and discussing potential problems the campus may face when the law goes into effect in August.
The campus carry committee will meet throughout the year and present their policies to the Board of Regents for approval sometime in early 2016.
SGA president Adam Alattry, who serves on the committee, said the first meeting was mostly a brainstorming session and a chance for those on the board to bring up safety concerns.
“We need to discuss where the gun-free zones will be, what to do about residence halls, what to do if one roommate has a concealed handgun license and the other doesn’t, and what sanctions we will take if someone with no license does bring a gun on campus,” Alattry said.
He said for him, the biggest concern is spreading correct information about the new laws to students, since confusion over the differences between open carry and campus carry is still common.
Journalism junior Sebastian Faura displays his handgun at his home Wednesday evening. Faura would consider concealed carrying on campus if there were ever an active shooter situation. Matthew Brown | Staff Photographer
“Over the summer, we actually had students coming into the SGA office, thinking campus carry was already in effect, when it won’t go into effect until next year” Alattry said. “That’s something we really need to bring up to students.”
The campus carry law only allows students with concealed handgun licenses to carry concealed handguns on campus, and it does not make open carry on campus legal.
Deliberately displaying a concealed weapon on campus is still illegal, and knives with blades longer than 5.5 inches will still be prohibited on college campuses.
Alattry said there’s still no word on where the gun-free zones will be, or whether or not gun lockers or safes will be installed on campus to accommodate them. He also said the committee discussed reaching out to other local universities and finding out how they plan to implement the new laws.
The administration at Texas Woman’s University is approaching campus carry with a different strategy.
In a statement released earlier this year, TWU chancellor and president Carine M. Feyten said she plans to form three committees to address the issue – one to represent students, one for faculty and one for staff.
Like UNT’s committee, these three groups will form a task force and present their plans to the TWU Board of Regents for approval sometime before August 2016.
“Each committee will meet a number of times during the fall semester and will solicit input during public forums as shown on the schedule,” Feyten said. “It is anticipated that the committees will provide preliminary plan recommendations at the end of the fall semester for submission to the chancellor’s cabinet for a mid-process review.”
TWU police chief Elizabeth Pauley, who will chair all three committees, declined to comment, as no plans or policies have been made yet.
TWU will hold public forums on all three of their campuses in October and November to collect feedback from students, faculty and staff. For more information, visit http://www.twu.edu/dps/campus-carry.asp.
Featured Image: Faura believes Denton is relatively safe but he would consider carrying on campus if UNT ever had an active shooter situation. Matthew Brown | Staff Photographer
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