Lindsey Wilson University will mark Constitution Day 2026 with a public roundtable and bell-ringing ceremony on Sept. 17, bringing three professors together to talk about the U.S. Constitution before the campus turns to a ceremonial bell ringing later that day.
The roundtable is set for 3 p.m. ET Thursday in the Thomas D. Clark Reading Room of the Katie A. Murrell Library, and it will feature criminal justice professor Casey McGowan, political science professor Mattew Powers and history professor Lucas Somers. The event is free and open to the public, a detail that fits the university’s aim of making the day more than a classroom exercise. Somers said he wants people to leave with a clearer sense of what the Constitution is and what it is not, and to better understand what it means to them.
That makes the discussion timely for more than one reason. September 17 is Constitution Day and Citizenship Day, the federal observance created in 2004 to recognize the Constitution and those who have become U.S. citizens, and 2026 also marks the semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence. Those anniversaries sit close together on the calendar, but the university’s programming is meant to keep the focus on the Constitution itself, which was signed in 1787 by 39 delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, ratified the following year and put into effect in 1789.
The day’s second act follows that line of teaching with ceremony. After the roundtable, the Alumni Victory Bell on the Campus Quadrangle will ring to honor the signing of the Constitution, tying the discussion to the moment the document first took shape. Lindsey Wilson History Club is sponsoring the event with the Jane Lampton Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Columbia, and the campus is also planning a voter-registration drive and a display about the Constitution in the Katie A. Murrell Library.
For students and visitors, the schedule leaves little doubt about the university’s message: the Constitution is not being treated as a distant anniversary, but as a living document to be discussed, marked and tested against what it means today.
