The Texas legislature has proposed a bill allowing guns to be carried on higher education campuses.
Dr. Don Albrecht, vice president for students affairs said that how WT handles the possible change depends on the bill that is passed.
“There are about six different bills being considered now. Some make allowances for campus rules in residence halls; some don’t,” Dr. Don Albrecht, vice president for Student Affairs, said. “We will respond accordingly to any bill that becomes law.”
Critics of the bill say that letting guns into buildings will run the risk of increasing small shootings and crimes of passion. But preventing shootings is the exact reason state senator Jeff Wentworth introduced the bill to the Texas legislature.
The bill was first passed in the Senate in 2009, but didn’t have time to pass in the House before the end of the session. Wentworth was inspired to bring the bill in front of the Texas legislature after watching the situation unfold at Virginia Tech. He brought it back for this session in hopes that it would make it to the House in time to pass.
While there are mixed opinions among the students at WT, sports and exercise science sophomore Kelli Page said that if the bill passes, it will only make the campus safer.
“I feel like the people that will have guns will be law-abiding citizens so I feel like we’ll have protection so we don’t have another Virginia Tech,” Page said. “The people that are going to come shoot us aren’t going to wait until we are allowed to take guns into the building. It will give us a better chance to stop them before they kill a lot of people if other people have guns in the building as well.”
The Texas Legislature is in session until May 30 and the gun issue promises to be a controversial issue after the University of Texas at Austin shooting last fall when a gunman opened fire on the UT-Austin campus before killing himself. No other people were harmed in the shooting.
Dr. Albrecht said that if the Bill is passed, the University will let the student body know immediately and inform students about any additional campus-specific rules in the law.
There is no information on when the bill will go into effect if it passes.
