AUSTIN, Texas – A pro-campus carry group is considering paying students to help them file complaints against University of Texas at Austin professors who want to ban guns in their offices.
“(Students for Concealed Carry) is already working on a variety of plans to document incidents of wrongful exclusion on the UT-Austin campus,” the group’s southwest regional director, Antonia Okafor, said in a statement Tuesday. “One of the proposals we’re considering is the offering of a cash prize to the student who documents the most verifiable cases of faculty or staff prohibiting licensed concealed carry in offices.”
Beginning Aug. 1, licensed gun owners will be able to carry concealed handguns into most buildings at Texas’ public four-year colleges and universities under the state’s new campus carry law. While the law opens up broad swaths of campus previously closed to guns, it also gives each campus president the discretion to designate certain “gun-free” zones based on the school’s unique security circumstances.
Many campuses have proposed banning guns in dorms, gyms and laboratories, but UT-Austin is the only one that wants to allow professors to designate their private offices as “gun free.” Texas A&M University President Michael K. Young originally proposed extending his staff and professors the same exemption, but then backed out after being discouraged by the college’s lawyers and officials at the Office of the Attorney General.
But officials at the UT flagship stood by their plans.
“We believe our rules are fully compliant with state law. The campus carry working group that developed the recommendations that will become the university’s policies was chaired by a highly regarded law professor and included a former chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court,” UT-Austin spokesman Gary Susswein said.
Susswein added: “Critics of the new policies have indicated they will challenge them in court, as is their right. We expect the judiciary to resolve any outstanding questions.”
Okafor’s group says banning guns in offices violates another gun law passed in 2015, one that allows people to file complaints against public entities – like cities, counties and universities – that improperly ban concealed carry. Under this so-called “wrongful exclusion” law, people can file complaints with Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office then determines whether to impose fines of up to $10,000 a day.
The penalties law has already caused massive confusion across Texas, with citizens filing complaints against everything from police stations to community centers. Officials that run state-run psychiatric hospitals, somehow not exempt from the law, are left only with the option of encouraging people to leave their guns in their cars.
Paxton’s office has not yet been asked to weigh in on the campus carry issue. If someone files a complaint against a UT professor, Paxton’s office must investigate and determine whether or not the law has been violated, which could trigger a lawsuit or fines.
History professor Joan Neuberger, who helps lead a group of roughly 1,700 professors who pledge opposing guns in classrooms, was outraged at Students For Concealed Carry’s proposal to pay students who help target professors.
“If people are worried about the cost of bringing loaded guns into classrooms, offices, dorms and other buildings at UT Austin and other public universities, they should vote to repeal (campus carry) and keep our universities the safest place in the state,” Neuberger said.
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