COUNTYWIDE : View of War by College Press Varies

Opinions about the Persian Gulf conflict run the range of the political spectrum in the pages of Orange County college newspapers.

Some papers are anti-war, some evenly split, some take a “support-the-troops” line and one school is so preoccupied with campus issues that it has been slow to take a stand.

That school is Cal State Fullerton, where budget cuts and the possible loss of the football program have been the focus of attention since the beginning of the semester.

“We’ve got big things happening on campus,” said Jill Foley, a senior from Fullerton who serves as city editor at Cal State Fullerton’s Daily Titan. Since the paper resumed publication this semester, two editorials have run--both on campus issues. The editorial board has not taken a position on the War.

However, about five out of 30 news and feature articles in the paper’s first issue had some connection with the war: students’ reactions, local rallies and students serving in the Gulf.

A support-the-troops rally on the campus was held Friday.

At UC Irvine, where peace rallies have dominated campus life and the front page of the weekly New University recently, the majority of the paper’s staff is opposed to the Gulf War, according to opinions editor Jennifer Vineyard, a freshman from Seal Beach.

In the New U’s first issue after war broke out, on Jan. 21, there were three editorials about various aspects of the war, all with an anti-war position. Vineyard said she has received many letters in response. “Every letter I get for the war, I get one against it,” she said.

At Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, The Lariat has taken a far different position than the New University’s. The editorial in the semester’s first issue, on Feb. 1, was unequivocally pro-war. “Support the troops was about the gist of it,” said Lariat editor Tiffany Crosswy, a sophomore from Laguna Beach.

In between those two extremes, the staff of the biweekly El Don at Rancho Santiago College in Santa Ana was so evenly split on the question of the War that it took a Gulf battle to forge a majority opinion.

After the skirmish at Khafji, one staffer changed her vote, producing a majority against the war that expressed its opinion in a staff editorial Feb. 7, the paper’s only issue since the beginning of the semester. But to reflect the variety of opinions, the paper also had two other viewpoint pieces, one in favor of troop deployment and one against.

The anti-war piece, written by Gregory Creel, El Don’s editor in chief, prompted an anonymous, threatening note that was taped to the door of the paper’s office on Feb. 13.

The note read in part, “Gregory Creel will no longer be permitted to write in the El Don. Or he will get hurt. . . . Don’t call the authorities, they hate traitors too.” The following day, a pro-war sticker was pasted on the door.

At Golden West College in Huntington Beach, Rob Jenkins, executive editor of the weekly Western Sun, said an informal poll of 56 students showed that 82% supported the war. The paper devoted an entire issue to the war but has not taken an editorial position and has published pro and con viewpoints instead.