As concerns over campus safety continue to mount from students and faculty in the wake of a deadly shooting on the University of Colorado Colorado Springs campus, regents for the University of Colorado are still considering whether to impose a ban on people carrying concealed weapons on campus.
No action was taken during a meeting Friday, but regents plan to take up the issue again during their next meeting in June.
More than 1,000 people have signed a petition urging the university’s voter-elected governing body to change its policy and ban firearms on all university campuses. The petition began circulating shortly after two people were found dead in a UCCS dorm Feb. 16.
The university confirmed suspected shooter Nicholas Jordan wasn’t allowed to carry a weapon in the dorms, but the killing of his roommate Samuel Knopp, 24, and Celie Montgomery, 26, reignited a conversation on the schools’ weapon policy.
Concealed carry has been allowed on all CU campuses since 2012 when Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled that a campus gun ban was unconstitutional. But that rule has been questioned by a law passed in 2021, which allowed local municipalities, including governing boards of universities, to pass stricter gun laws than the state’s laws.
State lawmakers are debating Senate Bill 131, which would ban concealed carry permits on college campuses, but CU students and faculty are urging regents to take action beforehand.
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Read moreHaley Crist, an 18-year-old UCCS student and co-lead for the school’s Students Demand Action chapter, told regents Thursday that the fatal shooting has shattered students, faculty and staff who are “moving through campus with new fears, uncertainties and anger.”
“Instead of offering sympathy, we are demanding you to take action. Demonstrate to me and the other 900 CU affiliates who could not be present here today that you are committed to meaningful change,” Crist said, citing the petition.
“Ban all firearms on our campus not only to protect the CU students you represent, but in memory of Samuel Knopp. The power of change lies in your hands and I hope that you choose to correctly apply it and protect the CU system.”
While the homicides on campus fueled the debate over CU’s weapons policy, it’s not the first time the Board of Regents has been asked to take up the issue, Regent Wanda James said.
“I’ve been a regent now for about a year and a half. And almost every meeting that we have had, we have had people from the public, people from our universities, ask us to take this motion,” James, a Democrat, said Friday.
“I believe that it is the job of the regents to hear the people of whose house we govern.”
Regent Frank McNuty said he opposes any changes to the policy and looks forward to a “robust debate” in June.
“I don’t suppose it will come as a surprise to anyone when I say that I am opposed to this,” said McNulty, a Republican of the 4th Congressional District. “That is not to say that there aren’t voices out there who are opposed to this action and who believe in our right to constitutionally carry, our rights under the Second Amendment of the Constitution. And those voices will be heard.”
A UCCS spokesman told The Colorado Sun the campus has issued three concealed carry permits since 2012. None were issued last year.
Regents heard from nearly a dozen staff members and students during their Thursday meeting.
Yvonne Wu, an assistant professor of music at UCCS’ visual and performing arts department where Knopp studied, told the regents that a student told her they would rather keep a gun in their dresser drawer than register it with the university, a process that UCCS requires.
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Another student who signed the petition told Wu they left UCCS when they saw two rifles lying in plain sight at a campus party. Two of her colleagues have seen guns in students’ backpacks, Wu said.
“It is too easy to imagine a student dying by suicide with a roommate’s gun. Too easy to imagine a drunk student making a bad choice at that party. Too easy to imagine the heated classroom debate gone wrong when a gun is just inches away,” she said. “A strong policy prohibiting firearms would remove the gun in all of these situations and more.”
One student recounted when police knocked on her door in the early hours of Feb. 16 to search her dorm room for bullet holes, not long after Jordan allegedly opened fire in the adjacent dorm, killing Knopp and Montgomery. Now, she’s afraid to walk across campus alone and feels stressed when anyone knocks on her door, she told regents.
Dr. John Reilly, dean of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said he felt there was “compelling logic” for reinstating the ban to make the campus safer for not only students and faculty, but the roughly 3 million visitors who come to campus each year — an overwhelming majority of them are patients seeking clinical care, he said.
“We have three hospitals on our campus with no physical barriers between us. All three of those hospitals have weapon ban policies in place and we ask that we extend that to the rest of the campus,” Reilly said.
The proposed changes will be considered by the University Affairs committee at its next June 4 meeting and if approved, will be taken up at the board meeting.
During a hearing Friday in 4th Judicial District Court, a judge ruled Jordan, who faces two counts of first-degree murder, mentally unfit to stand trial after he was evaluated at the state’s mental hospital in Pueblo.
Prosecutors requested a second competency evaluation. His next court appearance is scheduled for May 31.