Fenves will lean on the recommendations as he develops rules for implementing the law on campus.
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“I will study the report closely and decide on our policy in the near future”, he said. “However, I have a responsibility to implement the law and will do so in a way that addresses the safety of our community”. For example, the plan would bar handguns from dormitories, since relatively few students there meet the age minimum of 21.
But the working group’s attempt to distinguish between the rights of parents (“yes” to campus carry), married students (“yes” to campus carry) and the rest of the student housing population (absolutely not) is much murkier waters.
December 10-Despite widespread opposition on the University of Texas campus to guns in classrooms, a university panel on Thursday recommended against designating UT classrooms gun-free zones.
License holders would have to keep guns in a holster. It is no longer a topic of debate on campus, and there has been one report of a problem: an accidental discharge at a university medical facility when a staff member took out her gun to show it to colleagues.
A task force at the University of Texas at Austin has recommended guns be prohibited in residence halls, at sporting events and in certain laboratories. As a private school, the university has the ability to opt out.
It did make recommendations it hopes makes sure the guns that are brought to campus are as safe as possible.
The university will uphold its current weapons policy and has chosen to opt out of Senate Bill 11, according to a statement from President Edward Burger released December 11.
The campus carry bill has been the center of protests and a petition that has been signed by 1,000 faculty members. “Guns will inevitably make their way into inappropriate locations and will be impossible to control”. Students for Concealed Carry complained that a requirement that semiautomatic weapons not have a chambered round of ammunition “flies in the face of accepted best practices taught by every shooting school, police academy and military branch” in the country.
Murdoch Pizgatti, president of the two groups hosting the event, told KXAN that the demonstration wants to call the attention of all concerned to the importance of campus carry laws.
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Opponents and supporters cite the 1966 mass shooting at the University of Texas, when Charles Whitman killed 16 people and wounded dozens more from his perch atop the campus clock tower.
