Public colleges and universities prep for Campus Carry

A controversial gun law will go into effect Monday, allowing concealed carry license holders to bring their weapons on public college and university campuses.

From faculty to visitors; the new Campus Carry law includes anyone who is legally licensed to carry a concealed handgun.

“I've actually been looking forward to it since we found out about it,” said UNT student Dakota Ives, “I just feel safer knowing I can bring my gun on campus.”

The new law marks a major milestone for gun rights advocates, but not all students see the change as positive.

“I'm not really in agreement with it, a campus really isn't a place to carry guns, students don't need guns," said University of Texas at Arlington student Jayesh Guatam.

Guns will not be allowed everywhere on campus. Local universities like UT Arlington and UNT have put special policies in place to prep for the new law. The list of places guns will not be allowed includes buildings that host sporting events, and ones that offer student clinical and medical services.

Eric Scranton lives near UT Arlington, “On a campus, yeah there definitely should be restrictions, I feel like people have the right to carry a gun everywhere else especially here in Texas, if they want to carry it here on campus, that's okay.”

Other students are less optimistic. “I'm a little bit scared honestly walking on campus now because you may never know what's going to happen now,” said Jayesh Gautam at UT Arlington.

Both UT Arlington and UNT have created campus carry task forces, and can make changes to their policies as desired.

UNT’s policy includes a provision where the school’s president can suspend the carrying of weapons for up to seven days in certain occasions.

Unlike their public counterparts, private colleges and universities in Texas had the choice of whether or not to opt into campus carry. Amberton University in Garland is the only one that decided to allow it.