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What University of Texas Campus Is Saying About Concealed Guns

Signs opposing the state’s new campus-carry law are displayed on the door and in the window of Prof. Joan Neuberger’s office at the University of Texas at Austin.Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

AUSTIN, Tex. — As classes began here at the University of Texas this past week amid a new law allowing concealed handguns on college campuses in the state, an accounting student quietly strapped on a pistol and headed to class.

A pre-med sophomore joined a raucous protest against the law.

A professor who had sued to stop the law resigned herself to teaching with handguns in the classroom.

And the college president sought out ways to safeguard the campus culture that he cherished while accommodating a law that he did not.

While the right to carry a gun is fiercely protected by Second Amendment advocates across the country, administrators at universities in Texas, both public and private, have expressed reservations about the so-called campus-carry law. Nowhere has the debate been as intense as it has been here in Austin, a liberal outpost in a conservative state.

The law, passed last year by the Republican-controlled Legislature, went into effect Aug. 1 and has turned this campus of 50,000 into a microcosm of the national debate over how to balance the constitutional right to bear arms with the costs that guns often impose.

Those on campus are at the heart of a struggle to decide how to expand rights without stepping on others and what, if any, places should be exempt. Many professors and students worry that guns in classrooms will frighten people and discourage free expression, which is the bedrock of academia.

The few students licensed to carry handguns and their many supporters beyond campus counter that self-defense and the right of individuals to bear arms must not be restricted.

The question now is how do those abstract ideas play out — for students trying to get through organic chemistry or meet a professor after class, professors who want to introduce critical thinking and intellectual exploration without fear, and administrators walking a tightrope with the Legislature. Here are the thoughts of four members of this campus.

Huyler Marsh grew up near Dallas, the son of an economics professor who discouraged guns in the house. As a freshman in Austin, he met a student who invited him to join the college shooting club, and he was hooked.

Now a 21-year-old studying for a master’s degree in accounting, Mr. Marsh has been shooting competitively for years. “Shooting at targets, it’s addicting,” he said. “You are chasing perfection.”

On the fourth floor of a library on campus, he quietly dropped his backpack and lifted the tail of his red plaid shirt to show a black .45-caliber pistol sticking from a holster wedged in the back of his waistband.

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Huyler Marsh, a graduate student in accounting, carries his gun on campus.Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

“I wear it pretty much whenever I can,” Mr. Marsh said. “It’s not that I’m afraid of getting attacked all the time. It’s more like a fire extinguisher or a seatbelt. You always have it and hope you never have to use it. If I call 911, it might be 10 minutes before they get here. It might be more. It’s nice to know you have ultimate responsibility for your safety.”

University rules still ban guns from many places: labs with hazardous materials, some areas of dormitories, day-care centers, football games, mental health facilities and the top of the University of Texas Tower, where 50 years ago an engineering student shot 49 people. Despite the rules, Mr. Marsh said he would be able to take his gun nearly everywhere he went.

College officials in other states with campus carry, like Colorado and Idaho, say there has been little noticeable impact. In Texas, only people older than 21 can carry concealed handguns, and university leaders estimate only a few hundred will do so in Austin. Mr. Marsh said most people would never even notice, which, he added, is “the whole point of concealed carry.”

Mr. Marsh lives in a group house just off campus. He has a drawer full of different holsters for different occasions, and a small revolver he can easily drop in his pocket.

Only one other student he knows carries, he said, and in the clamor that has accompanied the law, it is easy to feel like an outcast. A few of his housemates are so against guns on campus that he did not want to talk about it in his house, and chose the library instead.

“Some of my roommates are really loud about this,” he said. “We have respectful disagreements, but I try not to bring it up.”

Ana Lopez grew up not far from campus in Austin and dreamed of going to the University of Texas. Now a sophomore studying pre-med in the honors program, she is not so sure she made the right choice.

“I had a really great world literature last year,” she said. “We were a small class full of different races, different sexualities. We talked about a lot of contentious issues — slavery, racism — and of course people disagreed.”

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Ana Lopez, 19, opposes guns on campus.Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

She is worried now that in such classes that students will hesitate, knowing someone might have a gun.

“If we can’t have those kinds of conversations without fear, what is the point?” Ms. Lopez said in an interview. She added that if she had known that campus carry was coming to the University of Texas, “I probably would have gone somewhere else.”

In the spring, she went to a university meeting where the group deciding how to put the law into effect was taking comments. Ms. Lopez planned to just listen, but she noticed that no undergraduates were speaking, so she stood up and said she did not want guns in her classrooms.

She soon became one of the leading student activists against the law, joining a protest this past week beneath the clock tower where the first mass shooting on a college campus took place 50 years ago.

Campus carry, she feels, was forced on the campus by outsiders to make a political point.

“It’s not just an issue on campus,” Ms. Lopez said. “The Legislature has always been at odds with U.T. They don’t like us because we’re this liberal institution in a red state. They don’t have our best interest in mind.”

Taped to the door of Lisa Moore’s office is a sign with a kitten and butterfly that reads, “Ask me about my gun policy.”

The campus-carry law allows professors to ban guns from private offices, but despite her sign — a mild attempt at levity — written notice is not technically sufficient; professors are required to tell each student orally.

When asked about her policy, Professor Moore said: “I love what I do. I consider teaching and learning to be a sacred vocation. We want to do everything we can to promote it. I don’t see guns as a part of that. So, no, I won’t be allowing guns in my office.”

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Lisa Moore, an English professor, said: “I consider teaching and learning to be a sacred vocation. We want to do everything we can to promote it. I don’t see guns as a part of that.”Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

“I grew up on a ranch, and I can still probably kill a gopher at a fair distance, but what we were taught is you don’t take your guns to town,” she said. “I just don’t see a scenario where guns have a place in the classroom. I want students getting their mind blown to remain a metaphor.”

In July, she and two other professors sued the university and the state, saying campus carry’s “dangerously experimental gun policies” violated the First and Second Amendments. A judge refused to stop the law from taking effect in August, but has yet to rule on the case.

“The Second Amendment allows for a well-regulated militia,” Professor Moore said. “What we have is not a well-regulated militia. It’s a 21-year-old with a backpack.”

She sighed and then said, “I’m worried about accidents.”

She is also worried that the presence of guns might impinge free speech by making some students too fearful to speak their minds in class. Some professors have resigned rather than teach in the environment.

“I’m a lesbian who teaches gay and lesbian studies,” Professor Moore said. “I know how vulnerable some students can feel. Having a weaponized campus is going to make it feel that much less welcoming.”

Already, she said, the law has interfered with teaching. During her first class after the law took effect, she said, her English literature students discussed the rules and she explained how she could not legally prohibit guns in class, or even ask who had them.

“Three of them started crying,” she said. “We did not talk about Jane Austen that day.”

The campus-carry law was passed three days before Gregory Fenves became president of the University of Texas at Austin. He has spent more than a year since trying to accommodate it in a way that would limit the impact without inviting court challenges from gun groups or provoking the Legislature to pass new laws that could cut funding or impose rules that would allow people to carry guns openly in classes.

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Gregory Fenves, the president of the University of Texas at Austin, wishes he, like private colleges, could have the option to prohibit guns on campus.Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

“I don’t believe guns belong on campus,” he said in an interview in his office minutes after returning from a meeting at the Capitol, just four blocks from campus. “We had more than 3,000 comments on this from students and faculty, and they overwhelmingly opposed it.”

The law allows private colleges to ban concealed weapons, and nearly all of them have done so. Faculty at the University of Texas pushed hard to allow professors to do the same with their classrooms, but Mr. Fenves pushed back, because he thought the law would not permit it.

“I wish, like private colleges, we could prohibit guns,” he said. “We don’t have that option.”

The Austin campus has imposed a warren of exclusion zones to protect students and sensitive areas, but Mr. Fenves has tried to limit signs marking those zones. He told his campus safety team that he did not want the campus to “look like a war zone.”

The best outcome, he said, would be that the law had no noticeable effect and that a year from now the campus had forgotten about it. He worries, though, that it will affect recruiting.

Already we’ve lost a dean over the issue,” he said. “We are concerned about it, and we will continue to monitor it.”

Follow Dave Phillips @David_Philipps on Twitter.

For breaking news and in-depth reporting, follow @NYTNational.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 16 of the New York edition with the headline: Grappling With Guns on Campus. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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