News Release
September 2006
Bethlehem, Pa., September 13, 2006—Moravian College will pay tribute to Constitution
Day on Monday, September 18 with a panel discussion entitled “What the Constitution
Means to Me: Constitutional Essentials in an Age of Partisanship and War,” at
7:00 p.m. in Dana Lecture Hall located in the Collier Hall of Science, Locust and Monocacy
Streets. Admission to the panel discussion is free and open to the public.
Dr. Christopher Thomforde, the new president of Moravian College,
will moderate the discussion, and will be joined by panel participants John M. Morganelli ‘77, District
Attorney for Northampton County; Robert L. Freeman ‘78, Pennsylvania State Representative;
Patricia H. Dervish, deputy District Attorney at the Child Advocacy Center of Lehigh
County; and Attorney Fred Rooney ’75, director of the City University of New York’s
Community Legal Resources Network.
Morganelli, in his fourth term as District Attorney, holds the longest
record of service in that post in Northampton County’s history. He also
served as president of the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association in 2000 and
2001.
Freeman has served the House from 1983 through 1994 and from 1999
to the present. He
currently serves as chairman to the Committee on Committees and as a member of the Environmental
Resources and Energy, Labor Relations, Local Government, State Government, and Democratic
Policy committees.
Dervish, a former Moravian College adjunct professor in the Sociology
department, serves on the board of directors for the Child Advocacy Center of Lehigh
County.
Rooney, the 2002 recipient of Moravian College’s Haupert Humanitarian Award, graduated
with a bachelor of arts degree in Latin American Studies before continuing on to earn
master’s and law degrees. His widespread pro bono efforts have encompassed
working with both domestic and international child abductions and resourcing medical
care for Latin American children with life threatening medical conditions.
Recent federal law mandates that institutions of higher learning
must present an educational event on the U.S. constitution on or about September 17
of every year. In 2005
the college sponsored a lecture about former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
Moravian College is a private, coeducational, selective liberal arts college located
in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Tracing its founding to 1742, it is recognized as America's
sixth-oldest college. Visit the Web site at www.moravian.edu.
