The future of a “campus carry” law in New Hampshire remained in flux Thursday after major disagreements emerged among Republicans in the State House and the defeat of a last-minute push in the House.

Now, the question of whether to allow New Hampshire college students to carry firearms will come down to end-of-year negotiations between the House and the Senate.

In February, the House passed House Bill 1793, a bill to remove firearm restrictions for students and faculty at state colleges and universities. But Senate Republicans, who are divided on the idea, passed a more limited version Thursday: a bill allowing concealed firearms for faculty members only.

Meanwhile, House Republicans failed in a last-minute effort to pass the proposal again by tacking it onto an unrelated bill.

The dizzying series of votes on Thursday left major questions about the viability of the bill. Democrats in both chambers have opposed the idea, arguing it will lead to unmanageable safety risks on campus. Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte has stayed on the sidelines, saying only public safety is her priority when weighing the topic. And college town police chiefs and university leaders have voiced their own opposition.

Proponents of campus carry in the House say they are disappointed by the Senate-passed compromise and aren’t satisfied with limiting firearms allowances to college faculty.

“Well, they missed the whole point,” said Rep. Sam Farrington, R-Rochester, who has championed the bill, in an interview Thursday. “They kept the title of the bill as the Protecting College Students Act, right? So that tells me that the senators who voted for it didn’t even read the bill.

But Farrington argued the effort is not over, and said they would keep pressuring Senate Republicans to support the broader bill.

“It’s a non-starter right now, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have time to work together,” he said.

Twists and turns

As originally proposed, HB 1793 would prevent any public institution of higher education from enacting “rules, policies, or similar provisions” that restrict the “possession, carry, storage, or lawful use of firearms or non-lethal weapons on campus.”

That version of the bill, which passed the House, also stated that students would not need a permit or license to possess those firearms. It allowed students aggrieved by a breach of the law to sue an institution and required damages in a successful lawsuit to be at least $10,000.

When the bill arrived at the Senate Judiciary Committee, it attracted fierce pushback. That included Nate Buffington, chief of the Plymouth Police Department; Jack Dalton, the deputy chief of policy in Durham; the presidents of the University of New Hampshire and Plymouth State University; and a number of students and faculty members at the University of New Hampshire. In total, 1,872 people signed in opposition to the bill when it arrived in the Senate, compared to 92 in favor.

Students and faculty said they believed allowing firearms could make them less safe from other students, while law enforcement leaders worried it could hamper their ability to respond to mass shootings and other threats, and that it could cause alcohol-fueled tragedies and increase suicides.

Supporters, meanwhile, said it could allow people to feel safe walking alone on campus at night and argued it would provide students with the same natural right of self-defense as people outside college campuses.

The deluge of testimony appeared to give some Republican senators pause, such as Sen. Bill Gannon, R-Sandown, who said the bill left safety and logistics questions. That concern caused the Judiciary Committee to recommend the proposal be examined by a study committee.

But some Senate Republicans still supported the original bill, and by the time HB 1793 reached the Senate floor on Thursday, a compromise had emerged. In addition to allowing firearms for faculty members, the version that passed Thursday would bar state colleges and universities from preventing students from possessing “non-lethal weapons,” which include pepper spray, mace, stun guns, and TASERs. And it would create a study commission to look into the feasibility of future legislation to allow students to have firearms, including safety concerns and costs to colleges.

Sen. Keith Murphy, R-Manchester, who supported the original bill, said he would “hold his nose” and vote for the compromise.

“I believe, in my heart of hearts, that adults have the right to carry a firearm,” he said. “I believe this right will eventually be recognized by the Legislature.”

In the House, the attempt to pass the full campus carry bill a second time failed, 159-177. Rep. Nicholas Germana, D-Keene, and a history professor at Keene State College, said the idea was riddled with concerns. In Keene, he said, the college does not have armed security and relies on an understaffed Keene Police Department to respond to incidents on campus.

“I believe that we all want the same outcome: the appropriate balance of rights and responsibilities and safety on our campuses,” he said, urging the House to defeat the bill.

Farrington said he had presented an amendment to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he said would have addressed many of the concerns, including allowing colleges to restrict firearms in dorm rooms, require lockboxes, bar alcohol use around firearms, and prohibit firearms at major events such as graduations. “That’s something that we can work on in the next two weeks,” he said.

The House will vote May 21 on whether to accept the Senate’s amendments, reject them, or request a committee of conference. If it does the latter, that committee — which will comprise negotiators from the House and Senate — will have until May 28 to reach a compromise.

Resurrection of campus due process

On Thursday, the House also tacked a college campus “due process” bill onto an unrelated bill, Senate Bill 409, sending the measure to the Senate for the second time.

The Republican-backed amendment would require state universities and colleges to adopt a series of due process requirements for on-campus disciplinary proceedings — including the requirement that those institutions allow alleged victims of sexual assault to be cross-examined.

Those requirements include the right of a defendant to receive an impartial hearing; to be treated as innocent until proven guilty by a preponderance of the evidence; to receive written notice of the allegations at least seven days ahead; to receive a list of witnesses and evidence being used against them; the right to have a verbatim record of the hearing; and the right to appeal a decision to the vice president of student affairs.

The list also includes a defendant’s right “to confront and cross-examine witnesses who provide evidence against them — a point that has driven controversy.

Under the House’s amendment on Thursday, the defendant may not personally cross-examine a witness who is the alleged victim of the behavior being adjudicated. In that case, the bill states that the hearing officer must approve another person to carry out the cross-examination on the defendant’s behalf. The bill allows the defendant to observe the cross-examination of the alleged victim.

The bill would cover proceedings against students, student organizations, and faculty members.

The House added language to SB 409, a bill that would increase the penalty for a driver who fails to stop for a police officer attempting to pull them over from a misdemeanor to a felony.

The final bill, passed Thursday, faces an uphill battle. In February, the Senate rejected an earlier House bill to adopt the due process changes, House Bill 510, and attempted to create a study committee on the issue instead. That bill failed after the Senate and House refused to compromise.

But on Thursday, Rep. Bob Lynn, R-Windham, who has championed the due process legislation, argued that the latest amendment is designed to address the Senate’s concerns.

“I believe that we have addressed every objection that was a substantive objection to the bill,” he said.

Rep. Dave Luneau, D-Hopkinton, countered that the University of New Hampshire and other public colleges and universities in the state already have their own disciplinary proceedings that include due process, and said the bill is not necessary.

Luneau invoked his experience serving on boards at the University of New Hampshire and the New Hampshire Technical Institute. “In the 25 years I’ve been on both those boards, I’ve never heard any complaint about the due process procedures that are used for disciplinary hearings on campus,” he said.

In addition to the due process legislation, the House added another unrelated amendment to SB 409 that would hold governmental units — such as school districts — liable for negligence that results in personal injury or property damage.

This story was originally produced by the Concord Monitor. NHPR is republishing it in partnership with the Granite State News Collaborative.

In 2002, Ann Davis bought 380 acres between Wilmot and Springfield, a woodlot where, four years earlier, an ice storm had passed through and mangled many of the beech trees, red maples, birch and other hardwoods.

Davis enlisted the expertise of local foresters, whose management methods were born out of the White Mountains-based Bartlett Experimental Forest. They collected the damaged wood in four timber harvests that encouraged the growth of new trees.

“The spruce and the pine that were left after that, they they were maybe 10 or 15 feet tall, and now 20 years later, they are 40 feet tall,” she said. “[They’re] really starting to have timber value, but they’re also just beautiful to look at.”

When the U.S. Forest Service announced last month that it planned to close Bartlett as part of an agency restructuring, a decision it has now committed to reexamining, Davis was devastated.

Over the last twenty years, she and her husband have expanded their farm, Woods Without Gile, to 530 acres. They were named New Hampshire’s Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year in 2022 and Northeast Regional Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year in 2024.

She said that, throughout the state, many farms like theirs rely on foresters and researchers associated with Bartlett to provide real solutions.

“Just about everybody in the state of New Hampshire, I would suggest, enjoys either the beauty or being in a forest at some time during the year, and for some people, it’s almost every day,” Davis said. “The research that they do about forest management and forest health and all the rest of those things may not be an immediate impact, but over time, the loss of that resource and that loss of that knowledge, you just never get it back.”

The U.S. Forest Service announced last month that it would be moving its headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah, consolidating its regional offices and closing over 50 of its 77 research facilities, including Bartlett.

On Monday, Gov. Kelly Ayotte announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which encompasses the Forest Service, would reevaluate the plan to close Bartlett. The Department also confirmed that there were no proposals threatening New Hampshire’s other experimental forest, Hubbard Brook.

In conversations with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Ayotte and Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, requested staffing support for the forests and discussed further investments into Bartlett’s facilities, including improvements to its bunkhouse.

Research at Bartlett

In its first 50 years of existence, research at Bartlett Experimental Forest focused primarily on managing hardwood for timber using already-established techniques. Questions around tree quality development and thinning practices prompted Bartlett to push research forward.

In the last two decades, researchers have investigated the dynamic between vegetation management and the needs of amphibians, small mammals and birds throughout their life cycle, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Hardwood management, regeneration methods and habitat management across the country have been influenced by research conducted at Bartlett.

Mariko Yamasaki, a wildlife biologist, worked in the U.S. Forest Service since 1984, covering research and administration at Bartlett and the Massabesic Experimental Forest. She said private landowners, state agencies and commercial foresters manage their land in different ways, but research can help guide management and create common ground between stakeholders.

“If we as researchers can share the key pieces of how you can manipulate habitat and provide for the full range of terrestrial vertebrates that use forests in New England, hey, that’s pretty good,” she said.

Yamasaki said research into creating diverse, resilient forests is a hallmark of good forest management. Planting a mix of different tree and plant species on top of implementing effective cutting methods not only produces stronger and high-quality timber but also cultivates more suitable habitats for a wide range of species, she said.

At Woods Without Gile, shelterwood harvesting and patch cuts helped Davis manage her land with a focus on enhancing wildlife habitat and protecting water sources.

“Those are all practices that have been proven to work well in northeast over years after years and years of research at the Bartlett Forest,” Davis said.

Fears surrounded potential closure

Jasen Stock looked at a test plot that experimented with high grading — “cut the best and left the rest,” as he put it — and remembered a tour he took at Bartlett’s facility a few years ago. Stock, executive director of New Hampshire Timberland Owners Association, had an “a-ha moment” when he saw how unhealthy and poorly managed the left-behind trees looked.

“When we take a group out there and we say, ‘Why do you hire a forester? Why do you hire a land manager that understands forest management?’ You can take them out to that stand and say, ‘This is why,’” he said, “because the decisions you make today are going to affect the long-term growth and productivity of this property 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now.”

Bartlett hosts many tours, workshops training sessions and discussions for landowners, foresters, teachers and students. The tours are meant to serve as two-way conversations that help researchers see what’s missing from their work or what can be improved upon, Yamasaki said.

Losing Bartlett could have meant losing those pivotal conversations.

“No one agency is going to be able to do things all by themselves. It’s a collaborative, cooperative operation,” Yamasaki said. “It’s an ongoing [conversation] because stuff changes over time and you really need to stay current.”

That research and constant interaction affects forests outside of New England, too. Northern hardwood forests are also found in New York, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, the Great Lakes region and parts of Canada. If Bartlett were to close, Stock said entire bodies of research relevant to these areas would be at risk.

“There’s pieces that we’re still learning, not to also mention that there are other kind of emerging threats and influences on forests that are coming, whether it’s changing weather, changing climate, pests [or] wildlife intensities,” he said.

The support Davis received from foresters has stuck with her through the years.

“One of the things that I think sets the Bartlett site apart is the fact that they’ve done a really wonderful job of providing practical information,” she said. “There’s just no substitute for that.”

Despite strong support from Gov. Kelly Ayotte, New Hampshire lawmakers rejected a bill that would have required private insurers to cover a state-run mental health program for children.

On Thursday, the House of Representatives voted to send Senate Bill 498 to interim study, delaying action on legislation that would have required private insurers to help fund the state’s Families and Systems Together (FAST) Forward program.

It’s a wraparound care model that provides personalized services such as peer support, crisis planning, and family-focused care for patients aged 5 to 21.

Ayotte, in a statement, said she is disappointed to see “elected representatives choose subsidizing insurance companies over kids’ mental health care.”

“I’m not giving up on this, and I’ll continue working to ensure our children — and their families — get the care and support they need,” she said.

The decision leaves the state and taxpayers on the hook to cover roughly $2 million annually for commercially insured children who rely on the program but do not qualify for Medicaid.

After the House voted down the bill, John Hunt, the chair of the House commerce committee, said Republicans agree with Ayotte that children’s mental health coverage is a serious issue, but said the bill is not the right solution and should not be addressed through a “hasty, last-second Hail Mary.”

“We look forward to studying this issue and devising a sensible and measured approach that satisfies all parties and prioritizes patient care and quality,” he wrote in a statement. “I warmly invite Governor Ayotte to join us this fall as we work on the issue. Together, Republicans, Democrats and the corner office have the opportunity to come together and deliver a reasonable solution for the people of New Hampshire.”

The bill was sent to an interim study in a 188-164 vote.

Insurers push back

The FAST Forward program coordinates services tailored to each child’s needs, helping families access mental health care, crisis support, care coordination, and other resources aimed at improving long-term outcomes. 

The program’s effectiveness comes from its wraparound approach, which bundles services together.

But private insurers typically cover only some services rather than the full scope of services provided.