Student Senate Pulls the Plug on Feisty University Newspaper

The student union building at Cal State Long Beach was a scene of contrast last week.

In one corner sat the deserted office of the Union newspaper, minus its telephones and computers.

In the other corner, across a patio, more than 100 banner-waving students crammed into a meeting of the Associated Student Senate to engage in an emotional debate. At issue: the student government’s decision to shut down the feisty alternative weekly that for more than a decade has been a thorn in the Senate’s side and a veritable institution on campus.

The Union “is the forum in which we talk to each other,” student Debbie Tannenbaum told the gathering. “I don’t think it’s right that you took it away.”

Said Orin Ryssman, 27, a political science major who said he supported the closure: “The Union is not a journal of thought, it’s a journal of student drivel.”

In the end the student senators voted to stand by their decision to close the paper, an action that some on campus believe to be a violation of First Amendment rights. Union staffers said they would appeal to a student court. In the meantime, they say, the quirky paper that has been at odds with its student government publishers for years is out of business.

“It’s kind of hard motivating people to clean up when they’ve shut the paper down,” editor Gary Stark said in an interview at the paper’s litter-strewn office.

The immediate cause of the confrontation was the Union’s Sept. 26 edition, which contained a satirical supplement called the Sexually Frustrated Male Issue containing a photograph of three semi-nude men and several erotic illustrations.

Union staffers said the parody was an attempt to help students laugh at their sexual frustrations in an age of risky sex.

Student senators were not amused, describing the issue in a resolution as “lewd, indecent, or obscene” and a possible violation of campus policies banning sexual harassment.

Roger Thompson, associated student president, believes that the argument goes far beyond that. “We just felt that we could do better things with the money,” he said.

Besides exhibiting poor taste, he said, the paper simply was not being read by many students. And by acting as both a publisher and a governing body, he said, the associated student organization was opening itself to possible conflicts of interest. “One of the fundamental problems,” he said, “is that we were wearing too many hats.”

11,000-Circulation

Union staffers deny that their paper went unread, claiming a circulation of about 11,000. Potential conflicts of interest, they say, could have easily been avoided if the Senate had called on an existing publications board set up to deal independently with grievances. The real reason the publication was shut down, they maintain, was to punish them for several recent editorials critical of student government leaders.

“They don’t like any negative publicity,” said Stark, 22, a manufacturing engineering major. “By closing the Union down, they can silence an opposing voice.”

It is an issue that has come up repeatedly in the Union’s turbulent history and, ironically, had much to do with the newspaper’s founding in 1977.

Back then, according to longtime journalism professor Ben Cunningham, the associated students published the campus’ only newspaper, the Daily Forty-Niner. But the student leaders, angered by what they saw as critical coverage in the paper, voted to discontinue its funding. Publication was taken over by the journalism department, whose students became the exclusive contributors to the paper.

Open Expression

That prompted a group of dissident Forty-Niner writers and editors to create the alternative Union, whose pages were open to all students regardless of their majors.

“The thing about the Union is that it’s alive,” said Debbie Arrington, 31, one of the paper’s founders and its first managing editor. “It reflects the personalities of the students involved, whereas the Forty-Niner reflects the (journalism) department.”

For a time, things went smoothly. Paid for by student funds that at one point amounted to $170,000 a year, the paper provided aggressive competition for the Forty-Niner, which is financed almost entirely by advertising. The Union covered everything from personal life styles to minority issues.

Eventually, though, the conflicts began. Sensitive to editorial criticisms and bothered by differences in editorial taste, new generations of student leaders began whittling away at the Union’s budget. Two years ago, the paper got into trouble for publishing a page of stick figures engaged in various sex acts. Last year, bothered by the newspaper’s content and style, the Associated Student Senate voted to cut the budget from $25,000 to this year’s allotment of $10,000.

Even that amount, however, proved to be too much. After eliminating the funding and withdrawing its official sanction, the Senate last week removed the Union’s computers and telephones, canceled its printing contracts and announced that its office was up for grabs.

President Neutral

University President Curtis McCray, who has remained neutral on the matter, sees the conflict as part of the learning process. “I prefer to have as many voices as we can,” he said. “But this is a learning experience; it’s students attempting to wrestle with a real issue in a democracy that values a free press.”

Permanent loss of the Union, current and former staffers say, would constitute a major blow to the freedom and access of expression on the 34,000-student campus. But they say they have not given up.

“I’m really counting on the student judiciary,” Sark said.

Said Arrington: “When we first were thinking of names for the paper one of them was the Phoenix, something rising from the ashes. A good idea will come back; I don’t think this is the end of the Union.”