Guns On Campus? At University of Colorado-Boulder, Not In Undergraduate Halls

Concealed weapons won't be allowed in undergraduate halls of residence by contractual arrangements at the University of Colorado at Boulder, which will make provisions to accommodate those with a concealed carry permit, or CCP.

The university announced Thursday that it will be separating CCP-holding students, placing them in the graduate students housing on the condition they store the weapon in a safe. This is so the university complies with a Supreme Court ruling allowing people with state-issued CCP to carry handguns on university properties. The ruling was made on March 5.

"We will permit the weapon to be stored in a safe," said Bronson Hilliard, spokesman for CU-Boulder. "You can have the concealed carry permit and carry weapons on campus and live off campus. You can live anywhere with a concealed carry weapon permit but if you want to live on campus you have to live in these designated graduate student areas."

Students will be moving to halls of residence on Aug. 21. Classes will start six days later.

An estimated 96 percent of CU-Boulder's undergraduate students who are living in the residence halls are under 21. Therefore, by Colorado laws, they are not able to have such permits. In essence, the amendment to the housing contract may potentially affect only a small number of students.

Of the remaining 4 percent of eligible students -- nearly half of whom are living on campus -- are resident advisers. As university employees they are not allowed to live in undergraduate halls. The university also said that about 0.6 percent of its faculty, staff and students on campus have a CCP.

Under concealed carry, while those with the permit can carry a concealed handgun on campus and into the school's buildings, they cannot take the weapon on Folsom Field and any other ticketed public performance venue.

But it is not the permit that worries university officials. It is more on-campus safety.

Hilliard said the school is seeing its share of drugs and alcohol use among students and to couple that with a firearm could be a dangerous mixture. He called the undergraduate years a "delicate time" of students' lives.

"We felt having firearms in undergraduate student halls with all the experiences students go through was not a good mixture," Hilliard said. "It's those not experienced with firearms getting a hold of it [we are worried about]. We didn't want to add weapons in that environment. We felt the graduate area is a safer environment for people who want to exercise concealed carry permit rights."

CU-Boulder Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano said the university took "reasonable steps to adhere to the ruling of the Colorado Supreme Court, while balancing that with the priority of providing a safe environment for our students, faculty and staff."