The Colorado Supreme Court ruled in March that the University of Colorado Boulder must allow “those with Colorado concealed weapons permits to carry their guns on campus,” according to an article in The New York Times Saturday.
Now, that ruling is causing some faculty members unease, according to The Times.
Karen Jacobs, an English professor at CU-Boulder, said that the concealed gun policy “will create a climate of fear and intimidation” where individuals are afraid to speak their minds on controversial issues.
Jacobs’ concern is realistic. Students may be discouraged from voicing an unpopular opinion in class if their classmates have the opportunity to pack guns. Universities have been (and should continue to be) breeding grounds for free and lively conversations.
That being said, individuals have a constitutional right to bear arms. CU-Boulder is a public university. When school officials start abridging students’ rights at public universities, or any, they enter dangerous territory.
That doesn’t mean to say that private universities should abridge those rights, just that under law, students at publically funded universities enjoy all of their constitutional freedoms.
Moreover, public universities tend to have a large number of students who commute to class. It may be unrealistic to ask those students to discard their guns at the door when they do not have access to lockers or other safe places to store them.
However, that brings up the question of students who live on campus. Where do universities draw the line between where students can and cannot possess their concealed guns? If they are allowed in the classrooms, are they allowed in the dorms? Concealed guns seem even less appropriate in the dorm environment.
It would be interesting to see whether any students share their faculty’s concerns about concealed guns in the classroom. It seems likely that a number of them would.