{"id":9930,"date":"2025-10-21T10:35:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T10:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/9930\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T10:35:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T10:35:11","slug":"did-lafayette-college-try-to-silence-residents-president-responds-to-concerns-over-signage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/9930\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Lafayette College try to silence residents? President responds to concerns over signage."},"content":{"rendered":"

Lafayette College<\/a> is seeking signage to spruce up Allan P. Kirby sports center, which is drawing complaints from residents. <\/p>\n

Some residents also feel Lafayette\u2019s legal counsel tried to silence them when the Easton Zoning Hearing Board<\/a> heard the plans in August<\/a>. The school addressed the matter at a recent town hall meeting. <\/p>\n

Lafayette held a community town hall on Thursday evening in the school\u2019s Pfenning Alumni Center. The event was open to the public, and residents had an opportunity to submit questions to the school and ask their own questions in person. <\/p>\n

One subject Lafayette President Nicole Hurd covered was the signage request. <\/p>\n

In August, the school presented their plans to the Zoning Hearing Board, with attorney Chris McLean legally representing them. The special exception included six signs along West Pierce Street, ranging from a 382-square-foot leopard graphic to a 5-square-foot entrance marker. <\/p>\n

The combined size exceeds city zoning limits<\/a> by more than 550 square feet, and the amount of signs exceeds zoning limits by four. The board ultimately denied the request, but Hurd said the decision is under appeal. <\/p>\n

\"AllanA rendering of facade renovations at the Allan P. Kirby Sports Center at Lafayette College in Easton.Courtesy of Lafayette College<\/p>\n

Several residents attended the meeting to speak against the signage request. McLean often objected to the comments from residents who didn\u2019t live adjacent to the property, arguing there was no immediate impact. <\/p>\n

At Thursday\u2019s town hall, Hurd said the college followed the process in submitting its signage application to the zoning board. She acknowledged that residents were upset by how the college\u2019s legal counsel handled parts of the hearing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m always willing to apologize if we feel like we made a mistake, but we always want to make sure that we are good neighbors,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

College Hill resident and longtime Lafayette professor Paul Felder spoke during the town hall, reiterating concerns about the signage proposal and how the college handled the zoning process. He also attended and spoke at the August Zoning Hearing Board meeting. <\/p>\n

Felder alleged Lafayette often overlooks zoning ordinances and that the college\u2019s signage request is much greater than it needs to be. He added that the request was denied because the school failed to demonstrate hardship.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have never seen a public entity do what Lafayette did at the zoning hearing board, which was their lawyer, whenever an individual from the community got up, said they should not be allowed to speak because they don\u2019t live someplace where they\u2019re going to be facing that sign,\u201d he said. \u201cIn other words, at a public meeting, Lafayette tried to silence the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hurd said she could not comment further because of the appeal.<\/p>\n

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lafayette College is seeking signage to spruce up Allan P. Kirby sports center, which is drawing complaints from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-9930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}