College security tighter, but is it enough?

The push for guns on campus
In April, on the anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre, more than 500 university presidents, counselors, law enforcement officials and student leaders gathered at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond. They were there to learn how to keep students safe.

“Will my son, will my daughter, be safe at your school?” asked Roger Webb, president of the University of Central Oklahoma and former director of the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety. “This is why we can’t allow complacency to set in.”

To hear some students tell it, complacency has already set in. They don’t trust college leaders  and want the right to protect themselves.

“Firearms, put in the right hands, can be used for the good of society,” said Blake Graham, a junior criminal justice major at Ball State University. He and other students on the campus in Muncie, Ind., formed a chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, a national organization that lobbies state legislatures to allow students with legal permits to carry concealed weapons onto campus.

At least 11 colleges and universities already allow students to carry concealed weapons, a practice that is banned by law in 30 states. But since being founded after the Virginia Tech slayings, Students for Concealed Carry has put the issue squarely in the spotlight, starting  chapters at about 500 colleges and universities, it says. This week, the organization is organizing a nationwide lobbying effort targeting state legislatures and news organizations.

Paul Chandler, an associate professor of natural resources who is advising the Ball State chapter, said armed students could end a critical situation long before police could arrive at the scene.

“Whenever a university or school advertises itself as a gun-free zone, they’re basically saying, ‘Spree killers welcome,’ because they know everybody’s unarmed,” Chandler said. “Some people say, ‘Wouldn’t there be a shootout in the classroom?’ Well, a shootout in the classroom would probably be better than a massacre in the classroom.”

Concealed carry gathers steam
A similar campaign is under way at Liberty University, a private religious college in Lynchburg, Va., founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Jerry Falwell Jr., son of the late evangelist and chancellor of the university, refused to reject the idea outright, referring the proposal to the board of trustees, which will consider it in March.

“I want to make sure that we look at it long and hard before we make a decision,” Falwell said.

At the University of Nebraska-Omaha, Michelle Levine, a senior, endorsed the idea, saying, “If you need your own gun for your own personal safety when you’re sleeping or when you’re off-guard, that’s fine.”

In April, students at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and on other colleges wore empty holsters to protest the campuses’ status as gun-free zones.

“We’re basically saying that we want the right of all people that are over the age of 21 that already have a concealed handgun license to be allowed to carry in class so that tragedies like Virginia Tech might be averted in the future,” said Cody Smiley, a student who helped organize the action.

The idea has reached the legislatures of at least 13 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In the Louisiana House, for example, a measure to allow holders of concealed-carry permits to take their weapons onto college campuses died in June — but only after it won approval from the Judiciary Committee.

The drive frightens some educators and law enforcement authorities.

“It’s going to be very difficult in responding to an incident with an active shooter and try to decipher who are the good guys and who are the bad guys,” said Alan Gutierrez, chief of the campus police at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. “It’s already very challenging for law enforcement to respond to a situation like that.”

Arthur Romano, a nonviolence educator who founded the international organization Youth for Peace, said the focus should be on preventing violence because guns aren’t a deterrent.

Pointing to the statistics showing that college campuses were safer than society at large, Romano said, “The chances of experiencing violence is 93 percent more likely off campus than on.”

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