Binghamton Review

Binghamton Review is a conservative student journal at Binghamton University in New York State, United States. Issues of the magazine, published monthly from September to May, include news, humor, investigative journalism, and commentary on political, social, and student issues. The magazine is controversial on the Binghamton campus for its anti-liberal position and defense of conservatism as a whole. The Review's current Editor-in-Chief is Robert Edward Menje.

Editorial policy/format

Binghamton Review is the only conservative paper on campus, and editors must continue in this tradition. There are, however, many libertarians, moderates, and other political philosophies present in some of the articles, depending on the issue.

Letters to the editor include fan mail and hate mail, and are often printed. There is also a regular feature, the campus media watch, in which the Review criticizes and comments on other campus publications, Binghamton University officials, and the campus issues of the day. It is almost unheard of when a staff writer will agree with every article printed in the magazine. Additionally, the Review prints non-political articles, which tend to have a satirical slant, and are either of interest to Binghamton University students, or the targeted age group of college students.

History

Binghamton Review was founded in 1987, with John Guardiano as its first editor and two Russian ex-patriates as staff writers. The paper was composed of people who felt that other campus media was not properly portraying conservative positions on social and political issues. At the time, many Review staffers defined themselves as either conservatives, Republicans or anti-communists. The paper was chartered by the Student Assembly and declared fundable in 1987, and published monthly in newspaper format until 1992, when it changed to its current opinion journal format.

In the 1990s, the Student Association at Binghamton University froze funding for the publication when the staff refused to attend sensitivity training. The training was mandated by the rules committee of the Student Assembly after a political cartoon was printed that claimed Gay and Lesbian studies was not serious academia. The Review countered that their centerfold was a place for humor and cartoons are not serious commentary. More importantly, they claimed that this was an attack on free speech and it was not proper for anyone other than editors to have editorial control over content. The Review also cited an earlier example of the Assembly not interfering with free speech protection when The Student Assembly had taken no action against "Pipe Dream" for publishing Holocaust Denial advertisements by the Neo Nazi Institute for Historical Review. Ultimately, the Reviews content was condemned and they lost their funding, despite their claims of free speech protection.

The Reviews position remained defiant all through the nineties and into the present, as did the student government's position. However, despite lack of funding, issues continued to circulate, as the magazine was always able to attract the attention of national conservative groups, and because of private donors and the sale of advertisements. In a December 2004 meeting, the Student Assembly voted to once again fund the publication by a vote of 16-3, and that ended a 12 year funding ban, and an impasse between the Review and the student government.

During the mid-nineties, Binghamton Review started to attract more libertarians and moderates to its staff. The tradition of symposium writing developed at this time is still evidenced today.

Controversy

Given the controversial past of Binghamton Review, it was not surprising that they came to the defense of a fellow student publication, Pipe Dream, when that newspaper had many of its issues stolen on April 1st and 2nd of 2005, after it published a controversial April Fools Day edition in an attempt at satire. While this was a notable stance to take for a rival publication, it fit in with their libertarian/conservative view of speech protection. It did, however, deepen the paper's tension with other student groups on campus (who were among the most upset at Pipe Dream for its April Fool's edition.)

The controversy about Binghamton Review is not limited to liberal criticisms. Various writers, independent of the editorial position, have published articles endorsing legalization of marijuana, the lowering of the drinking age to 18, and the return of the "Campus Pub" -- absent from the university since 1999. This is possible because the Reviews structure allows its writers tremendous freedoms, and the result is a collection of essays that, while mostly right-of-center politically, often are not part of a theme.

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