Tag Archives: University of Texas System

State news

Open carry on campus? Please . . . no!

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campus carry

State Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, today made it clear that he opposes the notion of allowing anyone to carry weapons on college campuses in Texas.

More to the point, as I heard his talk today to the Rotary Club of Amarillo, he said that allowing guns into college classrooms is a particularly bad idea.

He noted a key foe of the idea of allowing such activity. That would be the chancellor of the University of Texas System. You’ve heard of him, perhaps. Former Navy Admiral William McRaven once led the nation’s special forces command. He is a Navy SEAL who, according to Seliger, “knows more about guns than just about anyone.”

McRaven thinks allowing guns on campus is a bad idea.

Seliger then presented a fascinating scenario to buttress the point about how bad an idea it is to let someone carry a gun openly into a university classroom.

Suppose a professor gives a student a bad grade, he said. Suppose, then, that the grade enrages the student so much that he wants to harm the professor.

I think you get the point.

I’m not going to oppose openly the idea of allowing Texans to carry guns in plain sight. The concealed carry law, enacted in 1995, hasn’t produced gunfights at traffic intersections, as some of us — yours truly included — had feared would happen.

But there ought to be some places where we ought to restrict the open display of these weapons.

Houses of worship are among those places.

So are college classrooms.

And none of that endangers the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

 

State news

Guns soon will be going to college

It’s tough to write about this in the aftermath of that hideous shooting rampage in Charleston, S.C., but I’ll try anyway.

Campus carry legislation has become law in Texas, meaning that before long it’ll be all right for students to carry guns to public college and university classrooms.

I’m going to try my best to keep a wide open mind on this issue, even though I join University of Texas System Chancellor William McRaven in harboring serious concerns about it.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/16/new-law-campus-carry-debate-begins-anew/

The Charleston carnage will take time to sort out. Dylann Roof is in custody and it’s likely he’ll be charged with a hate crime, meaning the feds will try him. As hideous as that crime is and the pain it has brought to an entire nation, it shouldn’t reflect on what has transpired here in Texas.

Our sincerest hope is that nothing does happen in Texas’s public universities that can be traced directly to the campus-carry law that Gov. Greg Abbott signed.

Concealed-carry legislation brought many concerns to Texans. I was one of them. Our concern about concealed-carry did not materialize, meaning that it didn’t result in street-intersection shootouts caused by fender-bender accidents.

Only people with concealed-carry permits will be allowed to pack heat into the western civilization lecture halls, which means they’ll at least have some training on how to use a handgun.

The question remaining for McRaven and other university administrators is how they’re going to implement the law, allowing students and faculty members to bring guns onto campuses.

I wish them all well.

And yes, I truly am hoping for the best.

 

State news

Texas is about to add to its reputation

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Ask a non-Texan to characterize the Lone Star State and the folks who live here in a sentence or two and you’re likely to hear the word “guns” mentioned.

“Texans love their guns.” “Texans would just as soon shoot someone as argue with ’em.” “Don’t mess with Texas, or someone with a gun will get ya.”

That kind of stuff.

Well, the Texas Legislature is likely to enhance or embellish that reputation if it approves two bills — over the expressed opposition of chiefs of police and at least one highly senior university administrator.

Open carry and campus carry bills are likely to become law in Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott says he’ll sign them both.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/05/26/texas-house-takes-campus-carry-ahead-key-deadline/

Lock ‘n load, Texas.

Police chiefs oppose the open carry bill that will enable those with concealed carry permits to pack the heat openly, strapped to holsters on their hips.

University of Texas System Chancellor William McRaven opposes the campus carry bill, which would allow concealed carry licensees to bring weapons onto college campuses.

The top cops and the chancellor have the same fear of both bills: They have the potential of creating tragedy, either through accidental shooting or self-inflicted gunshots wounds.

Both pieces of legislation give me the heebie-jeebies. Yes, the concealed carry law enacted in 1995 did the same thing, but it’s generally turned out all right in terms of its impact on Texas society. There haven’t been the spasms of violence in intersections over fender-benders that some of us feared when concealed carry became the law in Texas.

With open carry and now, with campus carry, I continue to get the nervous jerks over knowing that we’re (a) going to allow guns to be carried in the open and (b) allowing guns into university classrooms.

Retired Admiral McRaven, a former Navy SEAL who later headed the U.S. Special Forces command, has an interesting take on the campus carry bill’s potential impact. According to the Texas Tribune: “’If you’re in a heated debate with somebody in the middle of a classroom, and you don’t know whether or not that individual is carrying, how does that inhibit the interaction between students and faculty?’ McRaven asked at a Texas Tribune event in February. McRaven and others have suggested gun-wielding students might intimidate classmates and professors to the point of curbing freedom of speech.”

Maybe all this concern is overblown. Then again, maybe it’s justified.

I fear the worst if the cause for justification presents itself.

 

Uncategorized

Time for UT regent Hall to go

It’s reached a boiling point at the University of Texas System Board of Regents meeting room.

UT Regent Wallace Hall is facing almost certain impeachment, thanks to a legislative panel’s assertion that there are grounds to impeach the regent. The chairman of the UT board, Paul Foster, has said Hall should quit.

The Texas Tribune reported: “We spend a huge percentage of time dealing with him rather than dealing with the issues of the system,” Foster said. He also directly addressed Hall, saying his resignation “would be the most beneficial action you can take at this time.”

I have to agree with Chairman Foster’s assertion.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/05/15/ut-board-chairman-calls-regent-hall-resign/

I’ll stipulate something off the top: I didn’t attend college in Texas. I don’t even know the UT fight song. However, my family and I have lived in Texas for 30 years and we’ve watched one of the state’s signature university systems from afar for all of that time.

Wallace Hall has created a mess, apparently, at the Austin-based institution.

He is alleged to have interfered in the administrative functions of the University of Texas-Austin campus. UT-Austin President Bill Powers has been dragged through the PR sausage grinder as a result.

An impeachment would be devastating for the system’s brand. The Legislature, which has been investigating this situation for months, well might be inclined to toss out one of those who is charged with setting policy at the system level.

The damage would be terrible, to the university and even to Hall himself if he were convicted of the abuse of power accusation that’s been leveled at him.

Hall, therefore, should just cut his losses and quit.

He’ll recover from the damage done to his emotional well-being. More importantly, so will the University of Texas System.

Uncategorized

Aggies join the campus presidency tumult

Just when I thought that Texas A&M University had avoided the kind of administrative warfare that has dogged the folks at the University of Texas-Austin, there go the Aggies in getting mixed up in a tussle over who should be the next president of the system’s flagship campus.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/12/14/hussey-named-interim-president-texas-m-university/

The A&M System Board of Regents has unanimously named Mark Hussey to be the interim president of A&M-College Station, succeeding R. Bowen Loftin, who will leave soon to become chancellor of the University of Missouri.

It turns out Hussey was favored by Texas A&M Chancellor John Sharp. Another prominent Aggie, Gov. Rick Perry, wanted an old pal, Guy Dietrich, to get the interim president job.

Sharp’s guy won out. Too bad for the governor.

This kind of dispute is troublesome. We’ve been witnessing the hassles occurring at UT-Austin with President Bill Powers’s fight with some of the UT System regents. Gov. Perry has gotten mixed up in that kerfuffle as well. The regents keep meddling in Powers’s administrative duties. Perry, strangely enough, hasn’t done a thing to get them to back off, given that Powers was hired to do the heavy administrative lifting at the Austin campus.

I’m now officially concerned that Hussey could be undermined by Perry-Dietrich loyalists as he seeks to run the College Station campus during its transition from the Loftin era to whomever will get the permanent job.

It also might signal a rift between Sharp and Perry, one-time political rivals who have made peace in recent years. Sharp lost the lieutenant governor’s race to Perry in 1998 by a narrow margin. It was reported then that bad blood brewed between the two former Aggies dating back to when they served in the Legislature together.

I hope it’s all a mirage, that the two men are bigger than to let old hostility resurface.

The Texas A&M University System deserves better — as does the UT System — than to let politics get in the way of effective university administration.