In light of the day’s teach-ins and last week’s student-media funding freeze, the Week 8 A.S. Council meeting was the most intense of the year so far.
During public input, individuals from both the Black Student Union and media organizations addressed the council in hopes of influencing a future decision on the freeze.
Assistant Vice Chancellor of Students Affairs Gary Ratcliff displayed his contempt for the Koala.
“I’ve seen this for 10 years, where you allow student publications to fund hate,” he said. “Meanwhile, you are watering that weed with $7,000 — let [the Koala] use their own beer money to fund themselves.”
Koala Editor in Chief Kris Gregorian arrived at the meeting wielding $20 in pennies to demonstrate that students are free to ask for reimbursement of their fees that go toward the Koala.
As the council motioned to move to New Business, it voted to maintain the temporary freeze and discuss the topic at the campus media review committee meeting 8 p.m. Thursday.
Next, Student-Run Television co-manager Thomas Dadourian begged the council to reopen the station.
Campuswide Senator Desiree Prevo said the SRTV shutdown paled in comparison to larger issues.
“Your voice may be silenced temporarily, but as a student of color on this campus, my voice is silenced permanently,” she said.
The motion to reinstate SRTV’s charter, with an amendment banning live shows, failed.
AVP of Diversity Affairs Jasmine Phillips spoke to AVP of Academic Affairs and Pi Kappa Alpha member Jordan Taylor regarding the racial incident at their meeting Sunday.
“PIKE is not taking accountability, they just attempt to cover their own asses,” Phillips said. “But they have had a lack of action and a nonchalant attitude.”
Taylor was visibly shaking and upset as he listened to Phillips’ speech.
Last week, councilmembers moved to create a committee to bridge the gap between the Greek community and the Student Affirmative Action Committee, but did not determine how the council would oversee the committee.
This week, council voted to institute Briana Boyd from Counseling and Psychological Services as the committee’s chair.
During member reports, Campuswide Senator Adam Kenworthy announced he would not wear shoes for two weeks to raise money for Partners in Health and Haiti relief.
President Utsav Gupta informed the council that the Graduate Student Association failed the University Centers CPI referendum that the council passed last week.
VP of Finance and Resources Peter Benesch excitedly announced that the Grove Cafe will take dining dollars starting in spring.
And, as always, what would an A.S. meeting be without the repeated issue of council accountability?
After a relatively brief debate, councilmembers voted to impeach Sixth College Senator Kevin Nguyen, who was notably absent.
Related posts:
The initial PIKE incident was an off-campus issue, but KOALA has made it a on-campus issue. If the university’s response to an off-campus issue was to hold a teach-in, allow a march (complete with black arm bands), and send emails to every student, faculty, staff member, and media source, then what did you THINK the university was going to do when KOALA brought the issue on campus? Whine about free speech if you like, but you know the climate and you know the stakes. The TV station and KOALA deserve to have their funds frozen for just being irresponsibly stupid. The other organizations should just sit tight and let the university get through its panic period. Things will loosen up.
@Nikki: If you don’t support the right of others to publish material you hate, you don’t understand free speech. They said something controversial, so they “deserve” to be shut down? Do you even read what you write? Insisting the Bill of Rights not be ignored counts as “whining” to you?
The goofy avatars kinda make debate funny but… in all seriousness. When you sign your SIR and register at an institution, you are agreeing to follow a Code of Conduct. Think of it as a Terms of Service agreement that you agree to when you sign up for a social networking site like Facebook or Stickam. Moderators and admins reserve the right to delete comments that are harmful and offensive to an individual or group. The moderators and admins for student press at UCSD are the AS Council. They reserve the right to withdraw support from student orgs or publications that are harmful to the community at large. You, the students of UCSD elected them to make these types of decisions. If you don’t like their decisions, it’s your fault for not electing people who agree with you or for not running for office yourself. Withdrawing financial support from a publication and TV production that feels entitled to support is not a violation of the First Amendment.
Simply put, if I were only insult and call people names in my Newspaper comments, I would not be surprised if my comments were deleted and that is the Guardian’s right to since it is providing the space for me to comment.
doctor,
Free speech is about having a political point that you can make in public without being thrown in prison. Free speech is the ability to say Obama’s policies on health insurance are wrong and a Wall Street giveaway without having the Secret Service come to your door and lock you up. Free speech is NOT about spouting racist epithets and then demanding that your university give you money to have a TV station.
In other words, Free Speech means UCSD does not throw you out of school. It does NOT mean you are entitled to taxpayer money for a TV station.
Nikki: You are right on point. Taking away the Koala’s dollars when they print hate speech is not censorship.
As a one-time writer for the Koala, I think the irresponsible hate-speech is disgusting and sadly, not surprising. The Koala is supposed to be mischievous magazine that pokes fun at everybody, and helps everybody laugh at themselves. Too often, it’s been a source of cheap, racist jokes that divide the community and make it harder for people of different backgrounds to talk to each other.
And as a one-time member of the SRTV staff… SRTV should be guarded from this kind of abuse. We worked hard (almost a decade ago) to make it an open place with a diverse range of programs back when we first went 24 hour. Koala-style obnoxiousness had no place on the air, or in the meetings. I’d like to see SAAC, the Cross, and other campus organizations take more control of the SRTV resource, rather than shut it down.
Can UCSD students really be this ignorant?!? What on earth are they teaching you (or rather, not teaching you).
It is beyond dispute that the speech is protected by the First Amendment. It is also beyond dispute that it is illegal to withdraw state-provided funding from an organization becuase of disapproval of protected speech from that group.
This issue has been litigated over and over and the result has always been the same – the censors lose.
Stop behaving like whimpering, whining babies. The real world is a lot tougher than than this trivial nonsense. Grow up already.
@ Jake @ sofiabg
From what I hear, KOALA is funded by student fees, money that we pay, and about $7000/yr total. As a student, I don’t want my money, even if it’s only 30 cents, going to KOALA. It’s not my job to fund their free speech. They can find $7000 in their beer stash. Perhaps a slew of letters to UC Regents from UCSD students could get the ball rolling, regardless of previous court rulings. After all, I don’t want to censor them; I just don’t want to pay for them. They can still peddle their talentless, racist crap, but not on my dime.
Gregorian (the KOALA “writer” who dropped the n-word) is 25 years old, a 5th year senior. By 25, most people have jobs, bills, a life. They’re not wasting their parents’ hard earned money in school drinking beer and yelling “nigger” on student-funded TV.
If you’re still an undergraduate at 25 and you’re spending most of your time wasted and crapping on the rest of the campus for the hell of it, your tuition should go up to what you would be paying if the taxpayer weren’t subsidizing your sorry ass. This year, that would be about 40K, since UCSD students pay about a quarter of what the tuition would be normally.
Maybe your parents wouldn’t “tolerate” you, Gregorian, if they had to pay 40K a year for you to be an embarrassing racist hobo.
Tho KOALA an arrogant and belligerent organization is the very definition of what free speech is supposed to protect.
It does not matter the message or how much one agrees or disagree, free speech is the foundation on which all the rights and privileges that we have in this nation.
At the AS Meeting the VP asked us to “image a list of priorities” where do we put safety, where do we put free speech. This has been decided for us already. Free Speech is the FIRST amendment. The foundation for the bill of right. There is no safety without it, there is no right to an opinion, no Martin Luther King, no Guardian, no liberty.
Students have no choice but to pay AS money, this means they have to maintain neutrality in their funding. There is no debate, its the law, its the foundation for this society, its what protects you and I.
Bash the KOLA, start a newspaper that teaches morals, use your free speech for good, but DO NOT DARE to infringe upon the rights of others to voice their opinions, no matter how derogatory they may be, or pretty soon you wont have the ability to speak yourselves.
@Michael – amen.
““Your voice may be silenced temporarily, but as a student of color on this campus, my voice is silenced permanently,” she said.”
Oh get off your high horse. You are not that much a victim and your histrionics are annoying. You do not have the right to silence others free speech and your overdramatic quip is just more of the same arrougance that when blacks are angry free speech comes to a halt.
I don’t like MY fees going to publications like Voz Frontera to print statements that Border Patrol agents should be shot/killed…..but alas, they do.
And should they be shut down as some would have done to The Koala? OMG, the screams of RACISM would be heard in Los Angeles.
The Grove accepts dinning dollars?
Mmm how is it against free speech to freeze their funding. Free speech does not mean you have a RIGHT to funding. Free speech means that you’re able to say and print what you want without someone stopping you. They should still be able to do that, just without any student funds. If anything put it on a student wide ballot and let the UCSD students VOTE on it.
Nobody is keeping them from actually printing their paper, the students just shouldn’t have to pay for it.
Isn’t that the whole point of free speech? that if you care about what you’re saying enough to say it that you’re willing to do it at any cost. I am totally fine w/ the Koala doing their thing, I just don’t think that they have earned the right to be given an office space or funding that ALL students have to pay for. If they want that money they should abide to a student code of conduct or just print and distribute their paper with their OWN money.
could someone please site the specific legal cases in the state of CA siting that students fees are mandated to go towards publications that violate the student code of conduct and deemed disruptive. I want ACTUAL court cases please, thanks!
Also, I would like to point out that the Koala is still linked on the main UCSD website, that means that the site is on UCSD.edu servers. Messed up
Koala code of conduct violations
* In 2010, The Koala was involved in a racially charged television segment on UCSD-TV, specifically SRTV (Student Run Television). The footage broadcast by the Koala organization was in violation of SRTV’s charter (since Koala did not attain the appropriate approvals required for all broadcasts) and included racial slurs and support for actions of students involved in the recent party billed the “Compton Cookout”. When school administration and officials later sought to collect a copy of the tapes at the The Koala headquarters, a note was found that read “Compton Lynching”. As both the Chancellor and the AS President of UCSD condemned The Koala’s actions, their future funding is uncertain as of yet. [1]
* In 2006, The Koala was evicted from its campus offices by Gary Radcliffe, assistant vice chancellor of student life, when a bong with marijuana residue and beer bottles were discovered in its filing cabinets. This resulted in a sit-in where staffers occupied and lived in the office and adjacent media commons.[2][3]
* In 2005, Editor Steve York broadcasts a pornographic video of him having sex with a woman on Koala-TV.[4] York’s story appeared on several local and national TV news programs.[5][6] York also went on The O’Reilly Factor to discuss the issue.[7]
* In 2003, The Koala published one of its most criticized
issue, a parody newspaper called Jizzlam, which ridiculed the culture of the Middle East and the Muslim religion.[8]
* In 2002, The Koala was accused of “disruption of a University activity” because of photographs taken of Chicano rights group member Ernesto Martinez at a public meeting. Additionally, two members of the Koala were charged with the same, as individuals. The charges against the individuals were eventually dropped, but the charges against the organization were brought in front of the University’s Judicial Board. During the proceedings against the organization, the university objected to the Board’s Chairperson’s ruling that the hearing should be opened to the public, citing privacy concerns of the witnesses. When the objection was overruled, the University walked out of the hearing, prompting a summary judgment by the board of “Not Guilty”. Later the University demanded a second hearing to override the first. The Koala responded by filing a lawsuit asking for $1 million and accusing the university of abusing the campus judiciary process in an attempt to stop publication of the Koala. A second hearing, closed to the public, found the organization “Not Guilty” of violating the Conduct Code a second time. [9][10]
* In 1998, The Koala lost its main campus office for repeated violations of the student code of conduct and student organization conduct agreement.
* In 1998, a spin off of The Koala, “Koala-TV”, was banned from campus for broadcasting nude scenes from a Jenny McCarthy Playboy video.
* In 1997, the staff of The Koala was cited for leaving a female student passed out in the office. The student was taken to a downtown drunk tank and fully recovered.
freespeechnothatespeech:
http://www.oyez.org/cases/1990-1999/1999/1999_98_1189/
Unanimous.
As the associate editor of the Koala, I find it reprehensible when people throw their beliefs under the bus in a fit of passion. To say that I, as a dues-paying undergraduate at this university, do not have the right to have my speech funded is ludicrous.
It seems like people, especially half-witted pity mongers, so easily lump together the Koala in to this classification of evil sub-humans because we don’t abide by your PC guidelines. Please kindly go fuck yourselves. The fact is that the Koala is made up of students, students that pay dues just like the rest of you tards. By denying me my rights you have abandoned your own. Of course, with your heads so far up your own squeaky clean assholes, I’m sure its hard to hear anything but your own voice any way.
Its amazing that none of you can see the true purpose of our newspaper. Besides being hilarious, we serve a higher cause. The Koala is a litmus test, a canary in a coal mine. And luckily for us all, that bird is still singing. We have always stood at the front line against not the students or minorities, but a draconian administration that is so out-of-touch with the student population that they cannot even fathom a party at UCSD, let alone the Compton Cookout.
You can have your little utopian, hate-free paradise over my dead body. In perfect stride with the entire theme of this university, it seems as if some would rather have their little sterile campus, where cartoons tell you how to recycle and parties consist of root beer floats with your RAs, rather than a real college. This isn’t a college campus, its a day-care center for highschool graduates. Sure, maybe you’ll learn some chemistry along the way, but you’ll still leave just as lifeless as you came in, having not really experienced anything not offered by The University of Phoenix online.
There was a time when people at UCSD set themselves on fire for what they believed in, that time is obviously long past. While I might not spark myself up anytime soon during one of your sloppily composed spoken word readings, I will endure your glares, racist accusations, and unfettered hate. These things sting momentarily. Backing down, being a little whiny bitch, being one of YOU will hurt for the rest of my life.
Yours Truly,
Wes Field
“Your voice may be silenced temporarily, but as a student of color on this campus, my voice is silenced permanently”
Give me a break. When people make garbage statements like this, they need to be called on them. In what way is her voice being “silenced”?
“freespeechnothatespeech”
Since you don’t like using spaces between words, neither will I:
“hate”speechisfreespeech.
It is amazing that there are actually people who think so-called
“hate speech” is not fundamentally protected by the Constitution. The First Amendment DOES NOT MAKE A DISTINCTION. Attempting to ban “hate speech” and then claiming you support free speech is such a contradiction, I am suprised it doesn’t make your head explode.
And the last time I checked, UCSD, an an organ of the government, is bound by the the First Amendment (and even if it were a private school it wouldn’t matter because of California’s Leonard Law). The First Amendment takes precedence over the Student Code of Conduct. Christ, when are some of the dimmer among us going to realize that? You cannot give other media organizations student funds and then deny them to The Koala because of the content of their speech. Such a movie is blatantly in violation of the First Amendment. Some of the idiots here, with “FreeSpeechNotHateSpeech” being the most obvious, need to get their heads out of their asses and realize that being offended is not sufficient grounds to violate someone’s rights. Get a freakin backbone and quit crying every time someone says something that hurts your poor little feelings.
For the more dense posters, let me recap.
Order of precedence:
1. United States Constitution
2. Student Code of Conduct
Get that through your thick, whiny skull.