By Michael Travis
News Editor
A group of students are attempting to launch a new publication on campus that will present conservative Christian views.
“The Pepperdine Review” would be distributed on a monthly basis and would cover issues that affect the lives of students. Marilyn Misch, assistant professor of accounting, will advise the students.
“The biggest difference between (‘The Pepperdine Review’) and the Graphic will definitely be the fact that the writing will have a slant to it,” said freshman Mandy Hobby, who will be the first editor in chief of the journal. Hobby brings years of high-school newspaper and yearbook experience to the staff.
“The things we choose to write about will reflect the fact that it is a conservative paper,” she continued.
The conservative viewpoint seems to be the primary concern of Bryceson Tenold, freshman and founder of the 15-student group.
“I noticed there was no conservative voice of the students on campus,” Tenold said. “We will cover issues like homosexuality in a way that reflects that.”
Despite the conservative slant, the editors said another goal of the Pepperdine Review will be to stay as objective as possible on certain topics.
The future publication’s mission statement reads: “Through consistent and factual reporting, we create awareness of the politics in the classrooms and in the university.”
According to Tenold, funding for the project is coming from the Collegiate Network, a nonprofit organization that helps create alternative student publications on different campuses around the country.
The slogan of the organization is: “the home of conservative college journalism.”
The Collegiate Network is part of the non-partisan Intercollegiate Studies Institute, an organization that provides resources for college students in the form of books, lectures, conferences and other types of publications.
According to the Institute’s Web site, the group “seeks to enhance the rising generation’s knowledge of our nation’s founding principles — limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, free enterprise and Judeo-Christian moral standards.”
The president of the Institute, T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr., is a member of the board of directors of the Federalist Society, a group of conservatives and libertarians who are interested in the current state of legal order.
The society claims that education is “currently strongly dominated by a form of orthodox liberal ideology which advocates a centralized and uniform society.”
Cribb’s essay, “What is to be Done?” attacks liberals: “The Leftists … bring a particular virulence to bear in attacking traditional American values that sustain ordered liberty.”
The Collegiate Network sends out representatives to campuses that are sponsored and gives them instruction on the design and content of their publications.
For now, the designing and editing of the paper is planned to take place on students’ personal computers on campus, and printing will be done by an off-campus company. The first issue is due to be distributed on April 1, but is still in the formative stages.
“It’s a new idea to everyone,” Tenold said. “I’m excited about it.”
March 21, 2002