Kutztown: Students can carry guns

KUTZTOWN University has dropped its blanket prohibition on guns and will now allow people with concealed weapons permits to carry them onto campus under certain conditions, officials said yesterday.

The Berks County university's new policy says that a gun owner with a "compelling reason" related to personal safety may bring a weapon onto campus with permission from the university police chief. Weapons will still be banned from campus buildings and athletic events.

Kutztown, one of 14 state-owned universities in Pennsylvania, made the change after lawyers concluded that an outright ban was legally unenforceable, according to Kenn Marshall, a spokesman for the State System of Higher Education.

The State System had encouraged Kutztown and the other state-owned universities, including West Chester Unviersity, to re-examine their weapons policies with an eye toward changing them if they included blanket prohibitions, he said.

Other state-owned universities, such as have looked at their weapons policies, Marshall said, but he wasn't immediately aware of any others that had made changes.