The mother of a man who was shot and killed on a dormitory on the grounds of Harvard University is suing the university.  Her claim is that the university did not take proper steps protect her son, and that lack of protection led to his death.

The facts appear to be this:  The son, Justin Cosby, went to the dormitory to sell marijuana in 2009.  He had no affiliation with Harvard. While he was there, he was robbed and shot by other people who were only there for the drugs and died.

Now, the guy who got shot wasn’t an angel.  He was a drug dealer who went to the grounds of a private institution to sell his wares.  My gut tells me “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes”.  But did he have a reasonable expectation that Harvard would provide for his physical security while on the grounds of the university?

Harvard University is a gun-free zone.  Their handbook for incoming freshmen states that firearms and dangerous weapons are not allowed on campus in accordance with Massachusetts law and school policy.  So people who go onto the campus, if they choose to follow the law, must remove from their persons those tools best suited for self-defense, including guns and knives.

If you force people who come to your campus to disarm, do you take on a legal responsibility to provide for their safety from those who choose to not follow the law and do not disarm?  That seems to be the legal question in this lawsuit.

Let’s look at this another way:  Let’s say I run a ferry company.  I believe that people who bring along their own inflatable rafts and life preservers clutter up the passenger spaces on my vessel and create a trip and fall hazard, so I prohibit my passengers from bringing their own safety equipment along for the trip.  If the vessel sinks, am I legally obligated to provide a life-preserver and enough space on lifeboats for every soul on board and trained crewmen whose responsibility it is to make sure everyone gets off the boat safely?  Or I could say that passengers can’t bring on food or water because it could be a health hazard.  Am I responsible for providing food and water to passengers if my ferry gets stuck out in the bay for a couple of days?

In my opinion, and I am far from a lawyer or legal scholar, if you take away the tools that someone can use to provide for their own safety while they are on your property, you become solely responsible for their safety, within reasonable limits.  Yes, in this case the person who was harmed was a criminal who had no connection to Harvard other than the place where his carcass hit the ground, but does that matter?  Would it matter if the person who was shot was a student, faculty, or an invited visitor?  Would Harvard be liable if the person who got shot was a jogger who was just running through the campus?

To me, when Harvard and the state of Massachusetts denied law-abiding citizens the tools of self-defense, they took on a legal responsibility to provide security at the level an armed citizen could provide for himself.  This one will be interesting to watch.