Conservative reaction to repeal of guns on campus law

Every week students eagerly pick up The Collegian to read the "UR Busted" section, and every week someone's iPod or laptop has gone missing. Now, imagine setting down your purse or book-bag in D-hall and coming back to discover it's no longer there. Of course, you can cancel your credit card and it's a pain that you no longer have your cell phone, but can you imagine if your loaded Glock went missing too? Whoops.

The debate over allowing students to carry concealed weapons on college campuses across America has been growing louder and louder with every new legislative session. No discussion of gun control on college campuses is able to take place without mentioning Virginia Tech's tragedy in 2007, which left 32 innocent people dead.

Virginia Tech suffered the unthinkable again in 2011 when an armed student from Radford University shot and killed a police officer on Tech's campus. It is Virginia's troubling history of gun violence on college campuses that has caused the glaring spotlights to shine on us whenever weapons and colleges are mentioned in the same sentence.

The 2012 legislative session is no different. In the Virginia House of Delegates, HB 91 would allow faculty members at universities across the state to carry concealed weapons on campus. This piece of controversial legislation joins HB 1226, which would allow the Board of Visitors, or other head governing body to decide on its own accord whether or not it would allow concealed weapons on campus.

Gov. McDonnell, R-Va., continues to stand by the decision he made as Attorney General that the governing bodies of colleges have "implied powers in various campus security matters to limit access to firearms in certain places on campus."

I, too, believe the decision should be left up to the governing body of a university. No one knows their own college campus like those directly associated with it. Regarding gun control, it would be unreasonable for the state legislature to impose a "set-standard" for everyone to follow. Some schools may choose to allow concealed weapons and others may not, for whatever reason. There can be no universal standard because each college is unique. The governing body of each university will be able to take multiple factors into consideration when deciding on weapon regulations.

A good example of this is Hampden-Sydney College, a private, liberal arts, all-male college located outside Farmville, Va. For many years, Hampden-Sydney has enjoyed a successful firearm policy on campus. At Hampden-Sydney students are allowed to bring their rifles, shotguns and archery equipment to school and store it in an assigned gun locker on campus. Because of Hampden-Sydney's location in prime hunting territory, such a policy makes sense. In contrast to Hampden-Sydney, the need for students to regularly access rifles and shotguns on campus at Richmond seems to be less necessary given our city community.

The school's culture should also come into play when making decisions about gun control. For instance, if Richmond, even as a private entity, were forced by the state legislature to allow concealed weapons on campus, then we should at least have the right to control where firearms could be on campus. Richmond could decide to allow weapons in Boatwright, but deny access for those who are armed into the fraternity lodges.

Can you imagine what the lodges would be like if groups of intoxicated kids grinding on each other in those tiny little buildings were carrying loaded handguns? Exactly.

In conclusion, the state should leave firearm policies up to each individual institution, so that they may decide if and how they want to allow weapons on their campus. That way, we can keep the Saturday Night Specials out of our Saturday nights and enact reasonable policies that fit our needs.