Recent school shootings and renewed efforts in the Arkansas Legislature to allow concealed-carry guns on college campuses have prompted University of Arkansas faculty members and students to make their views on the issue known.

Pro and con opinions abound on the Fayetteville campus, where the debate has been waged before.

Late Monday, UA professor Sidney Burris began an online petition titled Against Concealed Carry on Arkansas College Campuses.

“It started at 10 p.m. last night,” Burris said, noting he’s only publicized the effort on his personal Facebook page. By 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, the petition on SignOn.org had attracted nearly 300 signatures from UA faculty and others, as well as those of residents of Arkansas and beyond.

“‘Viral’ is probably not the word, but it just spread through my friends network,” said Burris, a professor of English.

Comments from petition signers identifying themselves as UA faculty members cited reasons ranging from legal precedent to a fear of arming stressed students - some of them already belligerent about their grades or prone to depression and suicide.

But also Monday night, a pair of resolutions considered by a UA student group, the Residents’ Interhall Congress, illustrated the dichotomy of opinion on campus.

One failed and one passed, said Scott Flanagin, a spokesman for UA’s Division of Student Affairs.

The interhall group’s Senate Resolution 10, which supports “teacher and faculty concealed carry,” passed by a narrow 16-14, he said.

UA’s SR10 would support “any and all legislative measures” allowing members of the UA faculty and staff to lawfully carry concealed weapons inside university buildings and on campus property, according to the measure’s language.

UA’s Senate Resolution 9, which aimed to “affirm the right to self-defense” on campus, according to the measure, was defeated 19-11. It would have called for law and policy changes allowing students, faculty and staff members and guests of the university with concealed handgun licenses to carry their weapons on campus for self-defense, even inside campus buildings and dormitories.

Flanagin referred questions about the next step for SR10 to the president of the Associated Student Government, Tori Pohlner. Pohlner didn’t return messages left Tuesday with the student government office or her cell phone.

Arkansas law prohibits possession of handguns on campus or in any campus building, said the spokesman for the University of Arkansas Police Department, Lt. Gary Crain.

Crain cited the same statute he referred to in 2008 and 2009 when previous student and legislative efforts to expand concealcarry were under way - Arkansas Code Annotated 5-73-119.

“That law has not changed at all - yet,” he said.

Proposed gun measures currently under consideration in the General Assembly include House Bill 1035.

Sponsored by Rep. Denny Altes, R-Fort Smith, HB1035 would allow “trained and licensed staff and faculty” to carry concealed firearms on a university, college or community college campus under certain circumstances, according to the measure’s language.

SignOn.org, which describes its online tool as “people-powered petitions,” has a feature in which it will e-mail signatures to federal or state elected officials unless the petition’s creator disables auto-delivery, according to its website. However, it encourages the petitioner to “deliver it yourself” to ensure leaders pay attention to it.

Among those making comments in the first 24 hours of Burris’ petition were Arkansas residents and those who teach on campuses such as UA-Fayetteville, UA-Fort Smith and Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville.

One petition signer commented that the UA Police Department proved it was properly trained and could respond within minutes during an August 2000 murder-suicide on the Fayetteville campus in which a graduate student shot a professor in his office before turning the gun on himself.

“If anyone doubts the response of our police department, then they should reference the time we did have a shooting on our campus,” a Springdale woman wrote after her signature.

University police also responded to a potential shooter in January 1981 when a 19-year-old student burst into a sorority house waving a shotgun and threatening to shoot into a crowd of about 100 people. One of its officers fatally shot the man.

It’s not the first time Arkansas students and lawmakers have become involved with the idea of expanding concealed-carry privileges to campuses.

In spring 2008, some students on the campuses of UA-Fayetteville, Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Harding University in Searcy, John Brown University in Siloam Springs, the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith and Arkansas Tech University in Russellville told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette they participated with the national Students for Concealed Carry on Campus in a lowkey “empty holster” protest of current laws and campus policies.

During the 2009 legislative session, state Rep. Randy Stewart, D-Kirby, tried to pass a bill that would have allowed concealed-carry permit holders to possess weapons, out of sight, in their locked, parked cars on university campuses. Unlike the student advocates, he didn’t seek to allow the weapons to be carried into classrooms or other campus buildings.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 01/30/2013