Just a few minutes ago, Kutztown University president, Javier Cevallos, issued an update following flurry of news reports that were prompted by Raging Chicken Press’s story about KU’s new weapons policy published yesterday morning. Perhaps the most significant revelation was broken early today by the Allentown-based Morning Call who reported that the directive to open KU’s campus to guns came directly from Gov. Tom Corbett’s office. According the the article, Corbett directed all 14 PASSHE campuses to make sure they did not ban weapons from their campuses. Just moments ago, at about 2:40 pm, the Morning Call updated its earlier story after “Corbett Attorneys Put the Brakes on New Campus Gun Policies.”
Cevallos’s most recent statement seems to leave room for a return to Kutztown’s old weapons policy which prohibited guns on campus. According to Cevallos’s statement, PASSHE Board of Governor’s chair, Guido Pucchini (whose private security firm runs university police forces on three PASSHE universities and who has made significant monetary contributions to the right wing think tank, the Heritage Foundation),
announced the establishment of a Public Safety and Security Task Force to study all areas of campus safety and university police operations in order to enhance efforts to ensure the safety and security of our students and staff, as well as that of all visitors to our campuses. The task force will include in its work a review of the issue of weapons on campus in order to help ensure consistency across the System and that the policies comply with the law.
While the task force reviews this issue, the Board has asked the universities to maintain the status quo in regards to their existing weapons policies.
Given that the Board has asked PASSHE universities to “maintain the status quo in regards to their existing weapons policies,” it would seem that Kutztown may have jumped the gun (sorry for that) by revising its policy to open the campus to weapons. Now with Corbett’s lawyers telling PASSHE university to stand down on opening up their campuses to guns, there will be a little time to engage is public and transparent discussion of university weapons policies. We will continue to follow this story.
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