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Texas gun laws prompts Fritz Steiner, dean of UT Austin's architecture school, to decamp for Penn

Texas gun laws prompts Fritz Steiner, dean of UT Austin's architecture school, to decamp for Penn

Shots fired! Fritz Steiner, the University of Texas at Austin‘s architecture dean, says that he is leaving his post because of the state’s new campus carry laws.

Under Steiner, the UT-Austin architecture school has ranked among the best in the country. According to The Texas Tribune, Steiner said that “I would have never applied for another job if not for campus carry. I felt that I was going to be responsible for managing a law I didn’t believe in.” What’s Texas’s loss is Pennsylvania’s gain:  When the University of Pennsylvania School of Design approached him last semester about an opening, Steiner was receptive. On July 1, Steiner will become dean of University of Pennsylvania School of Design.

For the past 20 years, it’s been perfectly legal to carry concealed guns onto campus, but not into campus buildings. Although new campus carry laws were ratified last year, the laws don’t go into effect until the first of August. In a state with some of the nation’s most liberal gun laws, it’s worth noting that the new law does not allow open carry on campus; students, faculty, staff, or visitors must have a handgun license; and the gun owner must be 21 or older. Public universities are allowed to create some limited “gun-free zones,” but those zones can’t include classrooms.

Students for Concealed Carry, a campus group that supports gun rights, criticized Steiner, stating that, essentially, the only thing to fear is fear [of the law] itself. For his part, Steiner is looking forward to returning to the institution from which he earned three degrees: “Penn is a great institution and I am very happy to go to Penn, but I was approached … and, if it wouldn’t have been for campus carry, I wouldn’t have considered it.”


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