Fullerton : Students to Join Metzger Taping Advisory Panel

Cal State Fullerton President Jewell Plummer Cobb met with students Wednesday and agreed to form an advisory committee to deal with growing concerns about the television broadcasts of white supremacist Thomas Metzger on a campus cable TV station.

Cobb, who two weeks ago was booed for not meeting with protesting students over the issue, won their applause Wednesday as she conferred with about 50 protesters in her office.

The group was making the third protest demonstration on campus against racist tapings made by Metzger, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, on a cable TV access station.

Metzger has made his “Race and Reason” tapes, which he has distributed nationally, on public-access television equipment provided the university through Group W cable television. The student protesters have demanded a halt to the tapings.

Cobb, who is black, has repeatedly defended Metzger’s freedom of speech right to make the tapes. She was not in her office during two previous student protest marches.

On Wednesday, however, Cobb sat calmly in a conference room as the 50 protesters crowded into the room and faced her. The protesters read a resolution in which they said the university should have student and faculty representation as it renegotiates its controversial contract with Group W.

“I think an advisory committee is an excellent idea, and it so shall be formed,” Cobb told the students. They broke into cheers and applause.

Cobb, however, emphasized that no one’s freedom of speech--including Metzger’s--would be abridged, despite the campus dispute over the tapes.

She also noted, after her meeting with the students, that she had not committed herself to allowing student and faculty representatives being on the contract-negotiating team with Group W. Cobb stressed that she had agreed only to form an advisory committee.

Cobb said the Metzger tapes are personally abhorrent to her. But she said that Group W has been following the letter of the law by allowing Metzger to use the public access facilities.