Student Petition Calls for Hanna’s Resignation
September 14, 2020
Taylor Baker, a junior at Bloomsburg University, says that this call for resignation is in response to Hanna’s past sexual harassment allegations, and his current “gross mishandling” of the COVID crisis.
The sexual misconduct allegations against Hanna came in 2018 from a female secretary working for him at the time, stating that Hanna had made her feel very uncomfortable and touched her inappropriately. The allegations didn’t seem to amount to anything, however.
Baker said in an interview on Tuesday that these sexual misconduct allegations against Hanna are what made him feel that something significant needed to happen. After he saw Hanna’s “obnoxious, belittling video message” sent to students on August 25th, he decided to take action and do it himself.
Baker holds Dr.Hanna responsible for the massive COVID outbreak on campus. “He forced students to return to campus just so the University and town of Bloomsburg could pocket their money,” he claims in his petition. Also, instead of taking the blame himself, he is placing it all on the students.
This petition for resignation is now close to 250 signatures but still has yet to be officially recognized by the university. Baker believes that if 500 to 600 people can get behind the cause, and high-powered individuals start taking recognition that he can achieve his goal.
Baker says that the university’s ruling does not discourage him and that he will continue to spread the cause and strive to gain support.
Members of The Voice reached out to Dr.Hanna regarding the petition on the seventh of September, but no response was given.
Link for the petition – https://www.change.org/BasharMustGo 
Joy Christisn • Sep 15, 2020 at 4:43 AM
I drove through Bloomsburg a couple days ago and saw 9 college-age young people standing at a street crossing in very close proximity to each other, and not one was wearing a mask.
Todd Romero • Sep 14, 2020 at 11:11 AM
This is a really tough situation. Of course, the sexual assault allegations are not to be taken lightly, and that should continue to be investigated until the University gets to the bottom of what happened. I feel like that hasn’t been the case for a while, and I’m glad students are finding a way to put pressure on president to find the truth! However, where I disagree with the premise of this article is that the recent university Corona Virus outbreaks are somehow Dr. Hanna’s fault. That’s ludicrous to me. Could Dr. Hanna and his colleagues have made the decision to remain online for the semester? Yes. However, Bloomsburg University is not the only college to send students back to campus, but we are one of the only colleges in Pennsylvania to have an extremely high number of cases. That’s not on Dr. Hanna. That’s the student’s responsibility! If you research the number of corona virus cases for colleges in Pennsylvania, you’ll find that only two colleges are even comparable, and those colleges are Penn State and Temple. Both extremely large colleges with nearly two times as many students as Bloomsburg, and yet we have a comparable number of cases. That’s because Bloomsburg University students are still attending parties, not wearing masks, and not taking the pandemic seriously. I think regardless of how you feel about Dr. Hanna as a president, he is not responsible for this, we are!
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-college-cases-tracker.html
L Klein • Sep 14, 2020 at 10:48 AM
The Change petitions mean nothing because there’s no way to know if it is students signing it or just random people.