FAIRMONT — It’s the last part of Gov. Jim Justice’s earlier quote that was giving graduate student Taylor Tennant pause Monday on the campus of Fairmont State University.
When Justice signed the Campus Carry bill into law, he parsed it down in his trademark folksy manner.
“For crying out loud, the doors are wide open,” the governor said then, of the measure that now covers every public college and university in the Mountain State.
Translation: Such spaces are indeed public. Which means accessibility to any and all – including those who may have the intent to commit violence and murder with a handgun or rifle, be it impulsive or pre-meditated.
Under the law, which went into spoke to the bill during the forum.
So did another affected by gun violence.
The first day of the fall semester at Fairmont State is Aug. 26.
That’s when the president wants students fully armed — with awareness and information.
“My goal is that the campus self-defense act will be a non-issue when the fall
semester kicks off,” Davis said.
Tennant, a 23-year-old master’s student in human resources who was working out Monday in the school’s
Falcon Center, said he appreciates the bill’s broad mission of safety in the face of gun violence – which he
says is now inevitable in American society.
He’s just not sure about that “non-issue” part.
Not with armed college students, he said.
Not with the emotional tumult of undergrad life, he said.
After all, he said, it might come down to how many students feel “messed with” on any given day.
The Campus Carry law, he said, could conceivably make it easier for any beerfueled argument to end in
an exchange of bullets.
“Today, this place doesn’t ‘feel’ any different. But wait until fall, when everybody’s back.”
