The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 3 - 121

No Smoking Guns Here

directors to intimately and thoroughly understand the law and policies so that they could
clearly articulate it to their staff and public.
With a thorough understanding of the law,
a director of resident life provided an example
of their active role in advocating for clarity in
policies being created that would impact residence halls:
"We had staff on the working committees who
discussed staff issues and had a role to write
out and flesh out some policies that could
be shared with the larger subcommittee . . .
one of the things we had to do was iron out
was [whether] the live-in staff [will] be able
to maintain a handgun in their apartment.
We had to look at the larger university,
recommend language to discern whether or
not it was even a question. Then two, if there
was language in there that allowed us to go
off of so then define [it] specifically. We were
able to find some that didn't speak directly
to it but also didn't exclude it. So we had to
come up with a little bit more of a definition
than what was in the recommendations."
additionally, the director shared how campus
living is distinct from other areas of student
affairs:
"Our positions are very unique so it's [not]
like the larger university committee to talk
explicitly about that . . . And so in addition
to having to iron out how we were going to
permit living staff to have it [handgun], it was
going to be how and who. Because we have
several levels of live in staff, we have RAs,
graduate students, and full time staff and in
the spirit of the recommendation we believe
based on the words and the interpretation
of that particular recommendation they were
talking about full time staff of the university.

And so, one of the things we were really
helpful in getting them to see was it ended
up being a policy after the amendment was
passed . . . the addition of the word 'fulltime' because without that means RAs were
authorized and that's something we did not
want to see happen. So were successful in
getting the president's office to consider that
amendment."
given the nature of campus carry laws and the
fact that they were state-level policies, directors
of residence life have to be knowledgeable of
laws and policies to determine reciprocity of
permit holders that lived on campus but were
from another state. the fact that campus carry
laws are state-level policies, this means that the
directors have to stay up to date and abreast of
legal changes across the nation.

Directors from different states
acknowledged that colleagues
at other institutions who have
implemented policies can be
valuable to the policy creation
process . The participants mentioned
that they had a network of
other colleagues, either at other
institutions or at their own,
who they sought support from
as they were going through the
policy-making process .
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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 3

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