 Late one cold night this February, Student Run TV (SRTV), UCSD’s
student operated and funded closed-circuit cable TV station, decided
to turn up the heat by airing a 10-minute video, featuring sex acts
between UCSD student Steven York and an unidentified female. The
campus reaction to the Koala TV program was
subdued, probably because only a small number of students typically
view SRTV. But that was before a fully clothed York
appeared on local TV stations as well as on Fox’s The O’Reilly
Factor, where he claimed that he had done students a favor by spicing
up campus life. SRTV aired the video twice after the initial broadcast
on the Koala TV program (an offshoot of the Koala newspaper).
SRTV (like the always controversial
Koala newspaper) is funded entirely by self-assessed student fees
via the Associated Students.
UCSD students
who disagree with how the AS allocates these funds can request and
receive a refund. Some of the controversy surrounding the airing
of the Koala TV video was based on an erroneous assumption made by
some members of
the news media that state funds were being used to support SRTV programming.
The UCSD administration was alarmed
that SRTV had aired programming, which, if not obscene, was clearly
indecent, and called on students
to register their complaints to the AS. It also urged the AS to update
and tighten the SRTV charter and made it clear that it
expected the AS to take action to ensure that SRTV programming reflected
UCSD standards of decency and integrity.
The administration also launched an investigation of the SRTV broadcasts
and concluded that while FCC regulations
did not appear to apply directly to closed-
circuit, cable TV programming, the SRTV charter and the underlying
agreement
between the AS and the administration had been violated, as had UCSD’s
Principles of Community.
On March 2, the AS Council unanimously approved a resolution introduced
by AS student services commissioner Kian Maleki, denouncing the Koala
TV video as “inappropriate and distasteful” and declaring
its support for the UCSD Principles of Community. The resolution
also stated that the AS had established a grievance process to ensure
that student opinions could be heard and actions swiftly taken if
similar situations arose in the future.
Seemingly determined to disprove Mark Twain’s dictum that “naked
people have little or no influence on society,” York started
to strip on the Koala TV program, aired on March 3. The program was
promptly pulled from the air, which led York to threaten the AS with
legal action. — Dolores Davies
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