The issue of concealed carry on campus has been gaining traction nationally since the Virginia Tech massacre. For example, there is a national group, Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, dedicated to the cause. Similar legislation has been introduced in other states as well, such as Oklahoma.

Unfortunately, all of these bills have faced stiff opposition from college administrators, faculty members, so-called “safety experts” and liberal politicians. (The Oklahoma bill failed, by the way.) This new spat of legislation is no different. Missouri Representative and Democrat Chris Kelly was quoted as saying: “College boys love things that go boom. What we don’t need is beer and college boys and firearms.”

What nannies like Kelly want is to maintain an unfair double-standard. Law-abiding and licensed students are allowed to carry concealed firearms almost anywhere (depending on the vagaries of their state laws), yet they are forbidden to defend themselves on a college campus. People like Kelly demean and patronize these citizens.

What this also creates are conflicts between state laws and university codes, such as in Oregon, where a student at Western Oregon University was punished for having a handgun on campus, even though the police determined he had committed no crime.

For example, the faculty adviser of the student newspaper at Clark College was mysteriously denied tenure after she pushed the paper to do more critical reporting on the administration. (She also fought the administration’s desire to pre-screen articles.)

Or there is there is the ongoing battle at Montclair State between the paper and the student government. The paper is currently suing the student government for breaking public meeting law. Last year, the student government froze the paper’s budget during a battle over the government’s decidedly odd habit of meeting in private.

OR take Western Oregon University for another example. WOU fired a faculty newspaper adviser and disciplined a student journalist after the daily paper revealed a serious privacy flaw in WOU’s computer system.

These are all examples from college papers, but this happens at every level. David Simon, creator of The Wire, recently wrote an article about how the city of Baltimore is running ramshod over public record laws in lieu of an aggressive newspaper presence.

Which is why I can’t fathom why some technophiles and bloggers are gleeful about the death of newspapers. I mean, if you like your government to do whatever it pleases without oversight or accountability, by all means, throw a party because the future’s looking great.

Jeffrey Maxwell, who is also a former Marine, was first arrested by Monmouth police on Jan. 28 for possessing a firearm on campus, but the charges were later dropped by the county DA, who said:”I believe the Monmouth Police Department issued the citation in good faith and that there was an arguable violation. However, a careful reading of the statute and the facts led me to conclude the charge was not in the best interest of justice.”

You see, Oregon state law prohibits firearms in public buildings, but with the explicit exception of those with concealed handgun licenses. Nevertheless, WOU went ahead and punished Maxwell anyway, suspending him and sentencing him to:

“a psychological evaluation stating he is not a threat to himself of others” and a mandatory “ten page paper” ” with references, “citing, but not limited to:
1) the importance of following the law, even through civil disobedience.
2) the importance of accepting responsibility for one’s actions
3) and recognizing the impact possession of weapons on college campuses has on others.”

Unfortunately, WOU’s deplorable actions are par for the course in Oregon. Oregon universities have been ignoring, if not outright flouting, this law for years. University conduct codes are not above state or federal law, no matter how much administrators wish it so. Thankfully, the Oregon Firearms Federation has taken on Maxwell’s case, and the Oregon University System’s misguided policies will soon be stricken down.

For more on the issue, check out Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, a great group pushing for students’ Second Amendment rights.

*This is the second time I’ve had to write about Western Oregon University recently. The first time was when WOU punished a student journalist and his newspaper adviser for revealing a serious privacy flaw in its computer systems. Way to go, WOU. Way to go.

The censure was provoked, the CMA said in a written statement, by the university’s heavy-handed response to the newspaper article. As reported in The Chronicle in 2007, a student, Blair W. Loving, wrote an article explaining that he had accidentally stumbled on a computer file with 100 names of applicants to the university’s College of Education, along with their Social Security numbers.

Both the adviser and the student were punished for violating computer-use policy. Of course, any dolt can see the conundrum at work here: If Loving hadn’t “violated” the policy, students’ personal information would still be illegally available for less scrupulous people to obtain. (I guess this is a “letter of the law” vs. “spirit of the law” debate.)

In any case, if WOU is trying to make itself look as bad as possible, mission accomplished. The administration can hide behind its ham-fisted, zero-tolerance policy, but it’s (a) petty and childish and (b) bad for student journalism at large. As FIRE mentions in their post on the matter, California has recently passed a law protecting student journalism advisers from retaliatory actions by universities. Other states might do well to consider similar laws, lest college publications be “chilled” by administrations afraid of getting caught with their pants down.