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Giving
away Bibles on the campus of Bucknell University is at
your own peril, since the school requires a permit for
such an activity, according to a new dispute that arose
involving the school's Conservatives Club.
The organization has attempted to make several political
statements on campus, and has been shut down by
officials
 with the university repeatedly, said a
complaint letter assembled by the Foundation for
Individual Rights in Education. The revelation of other
permit demand for giving away Bibles came as part of an
e-mail exchange over the dispute, in which school
administrator Judy Mickanis told the leader of the
Bucknell University Conservatives Club that its members
needed a "sales and solicitation" permit to give away
anything.
"The policy is in place to protect the entire BU
community and I said that consistently permission was
needed to hand out anything from Bibles to other matter.
You just can't hand things out without approval,"
Mickanis' e-mail said. According to the report from
FIRE, the school in Lewisburg, Pa., is staging an
assault on student rights.
The Conservatives there have had "three events censored
in two months" in their attempts to make political
statements by a university "using flimsy or patently
false excuses," the report said. "Bucknell promises free
speech, but it delivers selective censorship," said FIRE
President Greg Lukianoff. "Bucknell administrators have
gone out of their way to abuse and even invent policies
in attempts to silence these students, all the while
professing to respect free speech."
He said the student group in March tried to hand out
fake dollar bills with President Obama's face on the
front and the sentence "Obama's stimulus plan makes your
money as worthless as monopoly money" on the back.
Mickanis told the students they were "busted" and they
needed a special permit for their "solicitation." She
told the students their offense was the equivalent of
handing out Bibles, FIRE said.
"Distributing protest literature is an American
free-speech tradition that dates to before the founding
of the United States," said Adam Kissel, director of
FIRE's Individual Rights Defense Program. "And why is
Bucknell so afraid of students handing out 'Bibles [or]
other matter' that might provide challenging
perspectives?"
Another incident happened in April, when students were
staging an "affirmative action bake sale" protest. FIRE
said affirmative action bake sales are a widely used
form of satirical protest against affirmative action
policies that treat people of different races
differently. Organizers typically display suggested
pricing in which African-American and Hispanic students
are asked to pay lower prices than Asian and white
students for the same items. The protests are thus
intended to satirize and spark debate about affirmative
action policies, not to raise revenue.
But Associate Dean of Students Gerald W. Commerford shut
down the event, with orders to the students to obtain
another permit. When students applied for one, they were
refused permission.
FIRE said by shutting down events by Conservatives Club
members, "Bucknell sends the message to its students
that speech is to be feared, monitored, and ultimately
restrained if it is deemed sufficiently controversial."
Bucknell declined to comment to WND on the issues, but
delivered a statement from General Counsel Wayne
Bromfield that challenged FIRE's description of the
events. He explained the "dollar bills" were disallowed
because students must register to participate in that
activity.
The second instance, "disparate racial pricing for
doughnut sales was prohibited because we cannot and do
not permit facially discriminatory practices," the
lawyer said.
The school declined to comment or expand on the
statements from Mickanis that giving away Bibles would
require a permit. Fire said the school's version of
events didn't align with what it had been told by
participants.
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