Campus carry takes effect on UT shooting anniversary

The timing, said Gregory Fenves, president of the University of Texas at Austin, was merely a coincidence.

But the irony that a new law allowing handguns on Texas' public college campuses went into effect Monday, 50 years ago to the day after Charles Whitman's murderous rampage from atop the iconic UT Tower, was lost on no one.

At a news conference early Monday, Fenves, without mentioning Whitman, said the campus will be no less safe than it was before the so-called campus carry law.

There was studiously no mention of that law later in the morning when Fenves and relatives of those killed and injured by Whitman gathered in the shadow of the tower to dedicate a new granite monument honoring the 16 dead and 32 wounded in what still is the worst school shooting in Texas history.

Some students and professors at public schools across the state are worried about the new campus carry law, which allows licensed concealed handgun holders to carry their weapons across the vast majority of college campuses. Few expect it to lead to major violence. Some supporters of the law have said it could prevent a shooting from happening again.

Regardless of opinion, however, the law now is in effect, and beyond news conferences about the new rules on various campuses, including UT and the University of Houston, the first day of campus carry was a relatively quiet one, a fact that did little to settle a year's worth of anxiety over the new law, in part, because there is little to take away from the first day - the fall semester will not start until later this month, and campuses remain largely empty.

Despite heated rhetoric on both sides of the debate, officials really do not know what to expect from the new law. Guns will have to be concealed and may be carried only by people 21 and older - leaving out a large chunk of the student population. Police and other university officials cannot ask who is carrying, so they do not have estimates on how many guns will be on campuses across the state.

Still, many professors are worried about what will happen when students bring guns into classrooms. Since Gov. Greg Abbott signed the campus carry law last June, some faculty have threatened to change their curriculums, worried that touchy subjects could set off a student with a gun. Three professors have sued UT-Austin. Others have left the state, citing campus carry as a reason for taking jobs elsewhere. The president of UH's faculty senate wrote Monday on Facebook that he may join them.

Those in favor of campus carry, on the other hand, have said they finally will be able to protect themselves on campuses like UH, where robberies happen each year.

The new law is deeply unpopular on Texas' public campuses. The state's private universities - including Rice - were allowed to "opt out" of the law, and nearly all have chosen to do so.

University leaders sought to calm fears. At UT, Fenves, who has said guns do not belong on college campuses, said he does not expect much will change.

"We have a very safe campus, and we have had a historically safe campus," Fenves said. "I think that will continue."

Many faculty, though, still have strong feelings against the law.

"It is a sad day for this campus," Andrea Gore, chair of UT's faculty council, said at the same news conference where Fenves spoke. "Walking over here today ... everything looked the same, but it felt different."

While schools, including UH, have pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into safety measures - buying fingerprint-activated safes to store handguns and hiring new officers - they will not know who is carrying or whether that will matter.

"I think it's to be determined whether or not it will have the impact people think it has," UH Police Chief Ceaser Moore Jr. said at a news conference Monday morning.

The campus, he said, now is like many other places across Texas, where licensed individuals can freely carry concealed handguns: "When you go to Wal-Mart, you don't know how many people are carrying guns."

The university hired nine additional officers to help, bringing its total force to 64.

Otherwise Monday, nothing seemingly had changed at UH's main campus. The university's 25 $200 gun safes - security boxes for people to store their guns when they go to the few gun-free zones across campus - had yet to be used. People also can keep their guns in their cars, if they are headed to buildings where guns are prohibited. New signs were up, marking those few areas where people cannot bring guns: most dorms, the football stadium, day care facilities.

That fact has some feeling uneasy about the upcoming semester. The president of UH's faculty senate posted on Facebook that he was "among the many faculty considering whether to remain in Texas at all."

"I've taught thousands of students here, and I have great respect and loyalty to them, to the University and its mission," Jonathan Snow wrote. "To the Texas Legislature who feel that they know more about guns on campus than all the founding fathers, professors, students and staff of the university put together, not so much."