The College Fix

Now here is something you don’t see everyday: a major, mainstream newspaper actually defending the right of students to carry guns on campus, and blasting politically correct efforts by the feds at the same time.

The Las Vegas Journal-Review writes Sunday in an editorial:

America’s college campuses have long displayed contempt for the First and Second Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. Now Congress is prepared to pass legislation that tramples students’ Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights as well. …

In the past couple of weeks, three bills have been introduced to address campus sexual assault, the most noteworthy of which is the Campus Safety and Accountability Act. But far from ordering colleges to honor the Constitution, the bill turns the Bill of Rights upside down by favoring the interests of the accuser over the rights of the accused, assuming a crime has taken place instead of determining whether a crime took place. …

If universities want to prevent sexual assaults on campus, and not just react to them, then students — properly trained and subject to background checks — should be allowed to carry concealed weapons. Yet university officials who claim to want to stop sexual assaults are overwhelmingly opposed to self-defense on campus.

Students don’t lose their rights upon enrolling in college. Nevada’s delegation should vote against the Campus Safety and Accountability Act, and any other legislation that tramples due process. Washington must stop piling overreaching regulations and mandates on colleges regarding crime. Higher education systems are not supposed to be justice systems — no matter how badly college administrators and politicians want them to be.

Hopefully more editorials like this come out so that common sense and constitutional rights trump campus hysteria.

Read the full editorial.

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