Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000
From: Vice Chancellor Charles C. Colbert <ccolbert@uiuc.edu>
To: All Faculty & All Academic Professionals & All Civil Service Staff
Re: Possession of Weapons on University Property
For the purpose of implementing the provisions of state statute 720 ILCS/21-6, I hereby notify members of the campus community that all properties administered under the auspices of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign need to adhere to the below statute.
The Chief Security Officer of the University of Illinois hereby designates the Chief of Police of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to receive, review, and issue written permission to posses or store weapons on University property, in accordance with the provisions contained herein.
Illinois State Statute provides as follows:
720 ILCS 5/21-6
Unauthorized possession or storage of weapons.
(a) Whoever possesses or stores any weapon enumerated in Section 33A-1 in any building or on land supported in whole or in part with public funds or in any building on such land without prior written permission from the chief security officer for such land or building commits a Class A misdemeanor.
(b) The chief security officer must grant any reasonable request for permission under paragraph (a).
720 ILCS 5/33A-1
Definitions
(a) “Armed with a dangerous weapon” A person is considered armed with a dangerous weapon for the purpose of this Article, when he or she carries on or about his or her person or is otherwise armed with a Category I, Category II, or Category III weapon.
(b) A Category I weapon is a handgun, sawed-off shotgun, sawed-off rifle, any other firearm small enough to be concealed upon the person, semiautomatic firearms, or machine gun. A category II weapon is any other rifle, shotgun, spring gun, other firearm, stun gun or taser as defined in paragraph (a) of Section 24-1 of this Code, knife with a blade of at least 3 inches in length, dagger, dirk, switchblade knife, stiletto, axe, hatchet, or other deadly or dangerous weapon or instrument of like character. As used in this subsection (b) “semiautomatic firearm” means a repeating firearm that utilizes a portion of the energy of a firing cartridge to extract the fired cartridge case and chamber the next round and that requires a separate pull of the trigger to fire each cartridge.
(c) A Category III weapon is a bludgeon, blackjack, slingshot, sandbag, sand-club, metal knuckles, billy, or other dangerous weapon of like character.