Fullerton : Students Planning New Protest Against Metzger

Students at Cal State Fullerton are planning to stage a protest, for the second week in a row, against former Ku Klux Klan leader Thomas Metzger’s use of campus facilities to tape programs in support of racial separation.

Metzger, of Fallbrook in San Diego County, has used television taping equipment provided to the university by Group W cable television. Under the agreement, the university must allow anyone wishing to tape a “public access” message to use the equipment. Metzger has taped numerous “Race and Reason” programs in which he and other speakers urge separate societies for all racial groups.

Last Wednesday, several hundred students took part in a campus demonstration against Metzger and his tapings.

Michael Palacios said that the protest today will be a march staged by the Coalition Against Apartheid and Human Rights Violations, a campus organization. Palacios, a junior from La Puente, said, “We expect about two to three hundred people to take part in the march. We’re going to form in front of the library at noon and then march. We’ll end up giving our petitions to a representative from President (Jewell Plummer) Cobb’s office.”

The petitions, Palacios said, ask that Cal State Fullerton drop its taping arrangement with Group W--thus keeping Metzger from producing his racial messages on campus.

Metzger has not made any recent tapings because equipment has not been working, university officials have said. But Metzger has pledged to continue making the “Race and Reason” tapes when he is able to do so.