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You see, I went to Bucknell. We're rivals, you know. So as a proud member of the Bucknell family, I've considered it my job to make occasional fun of our nemesis in Bethlehem. When I was in school, I even owned a T-shirt that said: ''Lehigh: Because not everyone can get into Bucknell.'' Sophomoric, I know. But then again, I was a sophomore. Now, I'm taking it back. I'm sorry, Lehigh. The reason is the First Amendment. The First Amendment protects our right to, among other things, freedom of speech. It's not something a private university like Bucknell or Lehigh...

Bucknell University, a well-regarded liberal arts institution set in a picturesque location in the rolling Pennsylvania countryside, looks entirely benign. Its campus is safe, its students intelligent. It counts among its alumni the famed author Philip Roth and Leslie Moonves, the president of CBS. It’s a college to which most parents would be proud to send their kids. But if your son or daughter is the type who might join the Bucknell University Conservatives Club (BUCC), you would be well-advised to send him or her somewhere else. Because Bucknell really, really does not want to hear what the students of...

Don’t Tread on Bill by: Malcolm A. Kline, December 22, 2008 American academics have mustered more support for Weather Underground alum and tenured professor Bill Ayers than they ever have for the country which they work in. Perhaps this should not surprise. The man whom failed presidential candidate John McCain dubbed “some old terrorist” and the land of his birth and residence have frequently been at cross purposes, although his intellectual fans do not see it that way. “Any person with basic knowledge of American history in the 1960s and 1970s knows that the Weather Underground did not kill anyone...

LEWISBURG -- A 73-year-old retired biology professor was convicted Monday of 20 felony counts of possessing child pornography following a trial before Union County Judge Louise O. Knight. Jack E. Harclerode, of 1225 Supplee Mill Road, Lewisburg, could face a maximum of 140 years in state prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced within the next three months. Meanwhile, he remains free on $100,000 cash bail. "I really don't think you're surprised" by the conviction, Knight told the elderly man after she announced her verdict. Harclerode had waived his right to a jury trial. Defense attorney Peter Campana, of Williamsport,...

LEWISBURG (PA)-- Neither President Bush nor Republican presidential nominee John McCain has shown leadership during the financial crisis afflicting the nation, a renowned author and presidential historian visiting the Valley said Tuesday. The Wall Street bailout crisis has revealed a "sad leadership vacuum in this country," presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin said before giving an address at Bucknell University. "Here you have the president of the United States in the middle of a crisis and the people were not listening to him in his own party," she said. "Then, there was McCain, rushing to Washington, hoping I think, to corral...

Vandals Trash Bucknell's Conservative Newspaper A student-run newspaper at Bucknell University was the target of vandals last month as over half of the copies in the paper's first press run were destroyed and/or removed from campus. The attack came as The Counterweight, Bucknell's conservative newspaper, highlighted criticism of the university's sponsorship of "Focus the Nation," a high-tech discussion on climate change. "This vandalism is unacceptable," said Sarah Schubert, the paper's editor. Ms. Schubert believes the act "amounts to censorship. "On a college campus, the free and vigorous exchange of ideas should be wholeheartedly defended by everyone," argued Ms. Schubert. On...

Real Valentines by: Samantha Soller, February 08, 2008 Lewisburg, Penn. – The Bucknell University Conservatives Club will be selling carnations and roses to benefit Susquehanna Valley Women in Transition, a shelter for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. The Conservatives Club will take orders for flowers February 11, 12, and 13 from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. The sale will take place on the ground floor of the Langone Center at Bucknell University. Roses cost $6 each; carnations cost $2 each. The flowers will be delivered by members of the club in suit and tie on Valentine’s Day. Carnations...

LEWISBURG, Penn. – In honor of the sixth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Bucknell University Conservatives Club will be constructing a memorial. The memorial will feature 2,996 flags, one for each victim of the attacks, and will be on display on the uphill lawn of Bucknell’s Langone Center on September 10 and 11. As part of the memorial, the Conservatives Club is encouraging members of the community to sponsor a flag for one dollar. All donations will be given to the Semper Fi Fund, a charity that assists wounded marines returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

As students settle in to their classes at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa., there is good news and bad on the academic front. First, the former because it will take less time than the latter, although the more positive update is not inconsiderable. “On May 20, 2006, President [Brian C.] Mitchell not only attended the ROTC commissioning ceremony, but also spoke movingly about the value of both the ROTC program and our military,” the staff of The Counterweight wrote. “While those outside of academia might see such an act as commonplace, it is anything but.” “When even Bucknell’s own course...

As readers of this space know, we frequently subject academics to what we view as constructive criticism. As travelers through the blogosphere may have noticed, they sometimes answer those critiques. “Someone named Candace de Russy (on the usually unbearably dreadful National Review blog on the university situation 'Phi Beta Cons') cites someone else named Laura Ventura at Accuracy in Academia to the effect that the fact that the journal Critical Inquiry has more citations of Derrida and Marx than of C. S. Lewis and Thomas Jefferson is an indication of the journal’s ‘anti-American, anti-war, and anti-Christian’ stance,” Bucknell sociologist Alexander...

Recently, feminists at Bucknell University sponsored an event that looked more like a Duke Lacrosse party than a celebration of feminist diversity. On March 8, Bucknell's so-called Feminist Majority - along with groups like the Women’s and Gender Studies Department, the Center for the Study of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity, and the Office of Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Awareness - paid $1,920 for a strip show at Bucknell. Billed as a "celebration of whore culture" the show was euphemistically titled the "Sex Workers Art Show." It featured a group of hookers, phone sex operators, smut writers, porn stars,...

Some of us Pennsylvania Dutchmen have long regarded Bucknell as the Berkeley of the Keystone State. In issue after issue, the crack staff of student reporters at The Counterweight alternative student newspaper shows us how right we are. Published privately by the Bucknell University Conservatives Club, The Counterweight offers up investigative stories of the underside of college life there that the regular campus newspaper treads lightly upon, that is, if they cover such happenings at all. “Bucknell currently claims to have 402 faculty members and 392 administrators,” according to the latest issue of The Counterweight. “The university has rightly added...

Some campus journalism is becoming quite good, particularly on the alternative, largely conservative, side. Part of this results from the donor base of alternative college newspapers vis-à-vis official organs. That is, while the former largely survive on outside contributions, the latter are usually dependent on school funding. Thus, while student journalists working for their house papers strive for independence and objectivity, they eventually have to confront the “Whose bread I eat, his song I sing” phenomenon. Alternative university newspapers are free from this potential constraint by college officials. The Carolina Review, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,...

Three students at Bucknell were called into the president's office for using the term "hunting terrorists." At Bucknell, this phrase is considered offensive. Now the university is trying to imply that the students were lying, but a smoking gun e-mail surfaced from the university president which proves otherwise. The source post has the full e-mail, as well as the "hunting terrorists" e-mail that got the students in trouble.

...found on the web: Two words. At Bucknell University, that's all it takes to get dragged into the President's Office for a half-hour discussion of word choice. And these aren't offensive words, at least not out here in the real world. But Bucknell apparently has a different definition of what is and is not acceptable. On August 29th, the Bucknell University Conservatives Club sent out a campus-wide e-mail announcing an upcoming speaker: Major John Krenson, who had been in Afghanistan "hunting terrorists." Those two words--"hunting terrorists"--resulted in three students being called to Bucknell's Office of the President by Kathy Owens,...

The Fordham Law Republicans are sponsoring a screening of a 46-minute documentary Brainwashing 101 on Thursday, February 24th, 2005, at 6 p.m. The film, which analyzes political correctness on college campuses, was recently named one of the ten best documentaries of 2004 by the Liberty Film Festival. Brainwashing 101 will be shown in the McNally Amphitheater of Fordham Law School at 140 West 62nd Street (between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues). A question-and-answer session with director Evan Coyne Maloney will follow the screening. All are welcome; admission is free. If you are not able to attend the screening, you can view...

Bucknell Bars Rep. Pat ToomeyBy Bucknell University Conservatives ClubBucknellConservatives.org | April 5, 2004 Bucknell University general counsel Wayne Bromfield has refused to allow Congressman Pat Toomey to give a speech on campus because he is running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate.  However, left-wing activist Ralph Nader is still being permitted to give the University’s commencement address, despite the fact that he is running for president.  Nader will be paid $13,000 for his commencement speech, which happens to be $13,000 more than the BUCC planned to pay Toomey. The Bucknell University Conservatives Club (BUCC) invited Toomey to campus to...

College Lite: less filling, tastes great?Andrew Grossman (archive) October 17, 2003 | Print | SendListening to talk radio could get you expelled from Bucknell University. Really. Students at Bucknell, in Pennsylvania, are prohibited from engaging in "bias-related behavior," that is, "any action that discriminates against, ridicules, humiliates, or otherwise creates a hostile environment for another individual or group because of race, religion, ethnic identity, sexual orientation, gender, language, or beliefs." Few radio shows, even on NPR, could pass that standard. Forget about music, too, although classical and jazz could be OK. Just not Wagner, of course. Although especially stringent, Bucknell's...

Glen Mills residents Charles Mitchell and Denise Chaykun captured national attention after landing on the cover of the New York Times Magazine section. The May 25 issue of the Times included an article by John Colapinto about the rise of conservative action groups on college campuses, focusing in particular on what Mitchell and Ms. Chaykun have accomplished at Bucknell University with their conservatives club. Mitchell, the organization's 2003-2004 president, has since appeared on a number of television programs. Mitchell, 20, and Ms. Chaykun, 21, are 2001 and 2000 graduates of Garnet Valley High School, respectively, where they began dating. They...

The Young Hipublicans By JOHN COLAPINTO The temptation, upon entering Charles Mitchell's dorm room at Bucknell University, is to assume that he's kidding. The doormat features a picture of Hillary Clinton and the injunction, ''Wipe Liberally.'' A vast American flag festooned in red, white and blue Christmas lights adorns one wall, along with a faded Reagan-Bush '84 poster and a small photograph of the cowboy-hatted Gipper himself. The sole concession to any interest outside right-wing politics is a wall hanging of an African jungle scene. ''My nod,'' says Mitchell, an intense 20-year-old history major, ''to multiculturalism.'' There's an element of...

PlatonNot your father's coterie of campus conservatives: from top, Charles Mitchell, a founder of the Bucknell University Conservatives Club, and his fellow members Denise Chaykun, Allison Kasic and Michael Boland. The temptation, upon entering Charles Mitchell's dorm room at Bucknell University, is to assume that he's kidding. The doormat features a picture of Hillary Clinton and the injunction, ''Wipe Liberally.'' A vast American flag festooned in red, white and blue Christmas lights adorns one wall, along with a faded Reagan-Bush '84 poster and a small photograph of the cowboy-hatted Gipper himself. The sole concession to any interest outside right-wing...

Sunday, May 18, 2003 By Claudia Cowan SAN FRANCISCO — Like thousands of other conservative-minded college students across the country, some at U.C.-Berkeley (search) are waging war against what they call rampant liberalism on campuses. Their weapon: a right-leaning monthly newspaper called The California Patriot (search). “We like to be watchdogs,” said Seth Norman, the managing editor of the Patriot. In fact, more students than ever are taking their minority opinions into the public domain to balance out the messages their peers are getting in the classroom at school. From the Patriot and The Stanford Review to The Yale Free...