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Lies at Bucknell and the liars who tell them

Bucknell administrators have been hearing from members of the public about their chilling and inappropriate response to the student Conservatives Club's use of the phrase "hunting terrorists" in a campus-wide email announcing an upcoming talk--and those administrators have been lying about the facts in order to try to make the problem they created go away.

Evan Coyne Maloney reports that Bucknell is formally responding to criticism by saying that the students who were called into an administrator's office and berated for their inappropriate phrasing were, in fact, "exaggerating" the content and the tone of a "casual conversation" that was largely about other things. It's Homecoming Weekend at Bucknell, so apparently the university has decided that it's better to downplay its censorious behavior--even if it means insinuating that the members of the Conservatives Club are liars--than to own up and apologize.

The trouble with Bucknell's approach--apart from its sorry absence of ethics--is that the president of Bucknell himself left an email trail documenting his plan to punish the Conservatives Club for its speech by rescinding his own support from the planned speaking event and by scheduling a meeting with Club members to discuss the "unfortunate language" of the email:

From: Brian Mitchell
Date: August 29, 2005 8:36:15 PM EDT
To: Chris Imbriano
Cc: Kathleen Owens
Subject: Re: Conservatives Sept. Speaker

Chris,

First, I am disappointed that the College Democrats did not wish to co-sponsor his event, assuming that it was non-partisan, as you have certainly inferred it was to me. At any rate, I hope so. I will ask them why because I believe that it was a missed opportunity.

Second, I am going to decline on the public sponsorship on this one. I had planned to offer assistance but saw some fairly unfortunate language describing the event over the e-mail. Dr. Kathy Owens will be writing or speaking to Matt about this issue. To prevent this from happening again (much like the issue with Dominic, who handled it very gracefully last year), I will need some assurances on the public relations associated with the speaker. Once we get this kink worked out, you should continue to feel free to seek reasonable support from my office.

Regards,
Brian C. Mitchell
President
Bucknell University

Woops.

Brian Mitchell is new to Bucknell. Before taking up the Bucknell presidency a year or so ago, he was, for sixteen years, president of Washington & Jefferson College, where speech codes are not a problem. Despite presiding for many years over a school without a history of expressive intolerance, Mitchell seems to be quite willing to engage in repressive and chilling behavior when it suits his institutional ends.

In this case, the goal appears to be to pressure Bucknell students not to employ phrasing that would place them politically as pro-war and as unimpressed with left-leaning quibbles about who the "real" terrorists are, and about whether it's possible to call any organization or individual who opposes the (terroristic) U.S. and its imperialistic ways anything other than freedom fighters. That goal in turn seems to be tied to the mistaken notions that it is the job of Bucknell students not to contradict their school's official orthodoxy, and that it is acceptable for an institution such as Bucknell to have an official stance on matters of contemporary foreign policy.

Mitchell would almost certainly deny this reading. But it's hard to comprehend his issues with the phrase "hunting terrorists" any other way.

Posted by acta online at October 2, 2005 08:17 AM

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Posted by: Gordon Core at July 12, 2006 09:54 PM

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