An ever-growing spiral of events at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) over the past two and a half weeks has much of the southern California campus in an uproar regarding hate speech and media censorship.

Beginning with a racially-themed “Compton Cookout” fraternity party on Presidents’ Day and escalating to the discovery of a noose in the UCSD Geisel Library on Feb. 25, UCSD’s campus has been facing fierce racial tension, exacerbated by a blanket funding freeze for student media outlets as a result of hate speech made in a student-run television program.

The events have raised questions about First Amendment rights to free speech and press on campus universities, where many media outlets rely heavily on university funding to publish and broadcast content.

Racial Tensions Plague UCSD Campus

On Feb. 15, a “Compton Cookout”-themed party was hosted at a student’s home by a group of individuals, many of whom were affiliated with the fraternity Pi Kappa Alpha. According to UCSD’s campus newspaper, The Guardian, the event called for men to dress in “XXXL” t-shirts and “stunner shades” and for women to dress in cheap clothing like “ghetto chicks.”

The event left UCSD’s African-American population — less than two percent of the student body — and its supporters stunned and outraged, leading to gatherings and protests in the following days. On Feb. 18, UCSD’s humor magazine, The Koala, aired a program on the campus Student-Run TV (SRTV) channel, in which Koala editor in chief Kris Gregorian called protesters “ungrateful niggers.”

The two words incited a wave of outrage among black students and supporters, and in response, the UCSD Black Student Union (BSU) declared a “state of emergency” and submitted a list of 32 demands to the University to fix what they deemed a “toxic environment.” Associated Students (AS) President Ustav Gupta ’10 shut down SRTV soon after the incident.

But in an unexpected move on the afternoon of Feb. 19, Gupta also froze student fee funding for all campus media publications, causing many students to question the ethics behind the move.

Almost a week later, a noose was found hanging from a bookcase in UCSD’s Geisel Library on the evening of Feb. 25, setting off a fresh round of protests and demands from the student population, culminating in a takeover of the chancellor’s office the next day.

A female student claimed responsibility for the noose on Feb. 26 and was suspended. The Guardian printed her anonymous apology, in which she said she and two friends made the noose with a piece of rope they had been playing with, saying she “innocently marveled at [the friend’s] ability to tie a noose, without thinking of any of its connotations or the current racial climate at UCSD.”

Other University of California campuses have seen racist images appearing on campus since. On Monday, an image of a noose was found scribbled on a bathroom door at University of California Santa Cruz. On Wednesday, several swastikas were found spray-painted at the University of California Davis campus.

Safe Environment, or Suppressing Free Speech?

Beyond inciting anger on the UCSD campus, the comments in The Koala and the ensuing student publication-funding freeze have shed light on universities’ reactions to hate speech through student media outlets.

AS President Ustav Gupta’s decision to unilaterally freeze university funding for student media publications came as a shock to the campus, where many students see it as an act of censorship.

“Mass media censorship is never the answer,” wrote UCSD communications major and former Guardian writer Teresa Wu ’10 in an e-mail to The Daily. “Moreover, many of the other media organizations on campus have expressed their desire to vocalize their own opinions about the recent incidents but instead they’ve found their voices suppressed, too.”

Although the funding freeze only affected a portion of student media outlets on campus — 14 of the 33 outlets receive funding from student fees — and many organizations have alternate funds, it has nevertheless hindered or outright prevented several outlets from publishing, and many heads of media outlets still see the motive underlying the funding freeze as a “slippery slope.”

“We don’t condone the actions or comments of The Koala, but as a media organization, we have to stand by them,” said Angela Chen, a news editor for The Guardian, which is independently funded. “If The Koala goes first, what’s next?”

Gupta told The Daily that the funding freeze was “not based on a singular occasion” and “not a response to content,” but that the AS had already been considering revamping the media funding process before the events.

“It’s not about censorship, but how we’re allocating funds,” Gupta said. “The right to free speech does not necessarily mean a right to funding.”

Gupta and other members of the AS stand by their original claim that the funding freeze was a response not to specific content, but to a general trend of media outlets perpetuating a “misuse of funds” as specified in the UCSD constitution. Article II of the constitution states that the object of the AS is to “to create and execute programs which serve the collective interests of the undergraduate population,” and Gupta claims that because the AS funding was not fulfilling its role as stated in Article II, that he had the authority and the responsibility to freeze it.

“I’m not for freezing funds based on content, but I don’t think that’s what we’re doing now,” said Andrew Ang ’12, associate vice president for student organizations at UCSD.

Gupta emphasized that some outlets have continued publishing despite funding freezes. According to Chen, The Koala has received anonymous donations that have helped it continue publishing during the freeze.

The freeze is set to last until a bill can be passed to the legislative branch of the student government to reshape media funding policies. Gupta and other AS officers have projected the changes to happen this week, although Nicole Teixeira ’10, editor of the satire magazine The MQ, noted that the process to change guidelines has been “very slow” and is skeptical of the promise of a quick resolution.

She also expressed the general feeling among student media outlets that in spite of the claims of Gupta and his associates, the freeze is a direct response to the offensive comments made on Feb. 18.

“[The AS] can’t say they’re punishing The Koala, but the general understanding is that they are,” she said.

Stanford Weighs In on Implications

The echoing of the racial tensions at UCSD at other Californian universities has raised concerns about the spread of free press and censorship issues to other peer institutions such as Stanford.

“These sweeping suspensions sound like the kind of thing the Kremlin might have done,” said Glenn Frankel, the Hearst Professional in Residence for the communications department and a member of The Daily’s board of directors. “I’m hard-pressed to see how [Gupta] can justify his actions.”

But on a broader principle of funding freezes based on content, Frankel acknowledged that it’s a gray area.

“It’s a tough question,” he said. “There are conflicting values: you want free dialogue, which always includes conflict, but you also need to find leverage for responsibility, which is often money.”

Tim Ford, co-director of Stanford’s Publications Board and editor in chief of the Stanford Review, asserted that while The Koala and SRTV both made “extremely poor judgment calls,” Gupta’s actions have made a bad situation even worse.

“UCSD needs student voices now more than ever to talk through and make sense of these difficult times for the whole community,” Ford wrote in an e-mail to The Daily. “In response to a few students’ poor judgment, even constructive news and commentary that could benefit the student body has been restricted.”

Gupta’s equivalent at Stanford, ASSU President David Gobaud, a coterminal student in computer science, does not have the same ability to freeze funding. According to Adam Beberg, a Ph.D. student and former Graduate Student Council member, GSC and the Undergraduate Senate would have to make a joint decision to retract student group funding.

Beberg also noted that the disciplinary process for similar occurrences of hate speech at Stanford would be handled by the University’s Office of Judicial Affairs and directed by the Acts of Intolerance Protocol. Ford agreed that Stanford’s disciplinary system would be preferable to the events at UCSD.

“I’d rather see Acts of Intolerance [Protocol] brought against individual students who choose to publish inflammatory material so they can at least learn why what they’re doing is wrong rather than silence an entire publication that could still offer the university community a service once it learns the wrongs of particular actions,” wrote Ford.