Alternative Voices : Student Magazines on UCLA Campus Boldly Fill a Media Void

On an office wall in UCLA’s Kerckhoff Hall, Malcolm X’s poster image jabs a defiant forefinger at a void in America’s civil rights consciousness.

Nearby, Chicano labor leader Cesar Chavez’s photograph implores shoppers to boycott supermarkets selling pesticide-treated grapes. Elsewhere, in block letters, an advertisement for a documentary about the racially motivated beating death of an Asian-American man asks, “Who Killed Vincent Chin?”

The walls blare a long history of protest, reminding students who produce UCLA’s seven tabloid magazines why they are there. Within Kerckhoff’s cramped confines, behind the offices of the more staid and lucrative Daily Bruin, student journalists of different ethnicities and sexual preferences come to revel in the power of the word.

“The Daily Bruin writes mostly about issues on campus--for people in Westwood,” said Gloria Hernandez, editor of the Chicano publication La Gente de Aztlan. “We have totally different readership.”

Forged during the tumultuous student activism of the 1960s and early ‘70s, the biquarterly magazines, with their bold cover graphics and strongly worded editorials, have developed into powerful voices for those who have felt the alienation and disenfranchisement of being a minority on a predominantly Anglo, male-run campus, staff members say.

Nommo, the oldest of the publications, was started by African-American students more than 22 years ago. Swahili for “the power of the word,” Nommo was an outlet for the student rage that fueled UCLA protests in the late ‘60s.

Six magazines followed. In 1971, Chicano students founded La Gente de Aztlan; a year later, the Jewish student magazine Ha’Am began. In 1973, came the feminist magazine Together; four years later, the Asian Pacific student magazine Pacific Ties. In 1979, gay and lesbian students began publishing TenPercent. In 1990, Al-Talib magazine was started by Islamic students.

University administrators view the publications with pride and concern--pride in having a breadth of viewpoints not matched by student publications on any other U.S. campus, and concern about the distinctions the magazines draw on an increasingly diversified UCLA campus. Those distinctions may contribute to an increase in racial and ethnic tensions, officials say.

“The magazines are positive, in that they give a sense of inclusion to one group, but in doing so, they automatically exclude others,” said Tom Lifka, UCLA’s assistant vice chancellor of student academic services and a former member of the communications board that oversees student publications.

UCLA’s Anglo student population has decreased from 81% in 1969 to 55% in 1990. Last year, Asian-Americans made up 18.9%, Latinos and Chicanos 13.8%, and African-Americans 6.7%.

Magazine supporters say the student publications have dissipated animosity and misunderstanding on campus. No one disputes that the tabloids have explored issues seldom found in the mainstream press.

TenPercent published an interview in which Lifka, the highest ranking openly gay UCLA official, criticized ROTC policies that he said discriminate against gay recruits on campus.

In Pacific Ties, a series of articles accused UCLA administrators of setting unofficial limits on acceptance of Asian-American applicants. Included was an article about a 1990 U.S. Department of Education report that concluded that recent applicants to UCLA’s mathematics graduate program were rejected because of their Asian ancestry.

Political empowerment, civil rights and ethnic identity are standard subjects in the magazines, often cutting across race, gender and sexual identity lines, said Arvli Ward, an adviser to student publications at UCLA.

However, conflicts have surfaced. A Nommo editorial about a bookseller who distributed works that defame Jews drew heated editorials and letters from Ha’Am’s staff and readers. The magazine’s editor, Eric Rubenfeld, accused Nommo of attempting to give legitimacy to theories espoused in “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” The book, with its premise that Jews were conspiring to take over the world’s finances, was used by the Nazi Party to target European Jews for destruction.

“The article in Nommo was one of the most scurrilous examples of textbook anti-Semitism that I have ever seen,” Rubenfeld said.

Nommo staff member Thandisizwe Chimurenga said the response was surprising. The Nommo editorial protested a proposed ban on the sale of the Protocols at a city-sponsored African cultural festival, arguing that because of the scarcity of book outlets catering to African-American communities, these sources of information should be defended, Chimurenga said.

Such public disagreements raise concern about what effect the magazines may be having on student relations, some university officials say.

Magazine staff members see a more positive result.

“I think the exchange is really healthy,” said Together editor Jennifer Ferro. “The two sides have tried to legitimize their claims by putting thoughts on paper instead of screaming at each other in the hallway.”

Matt Fordhall, Daily Bruin editor, agreed: “There have been flare-ups; they will keep happening. . . . But compared to when it was just the Bruin on campus, the magazines have helped relieve tension.”

The university has no authority over the self-supported magazines, but administrators have recommended changes they say might better serve students, vice chancellor Lifka said. Two magazines have tested periodic inserts into the Daily Bruin as an alternative, Lifka said. Both magazines and the Bruin benefited, Lifka said.

“TenPercent had low circulation because many people were afraid of how it would look if they picked up their paper,” Bruin editor Fordhall said. The magazine decided to run an edition on sexual identity with the Bruin, inserting it into the paper’s 22,000 press run, thus sparing readers from any stigma attached to picking up a separate copy of a magazine for gay and lesbian students. It drew an interested readership, said Fordhall.

There are magazines that would shun any relationship with the Bruin, La Gente editor Hernandez said.

“The stories the Bruin has chosen to write about our communities are scandalous, violent, negative stories,” she said. “The people at the Bruin see the stories we write for ourselves, and they think the general community wouldn’t be interested.”

Because of significant off-campus readership, Hernandez emphasized how important it is for the magazines to maintain their independence from the Bruin and the university.

Only 3,000 issues from La Gente’s latest 10,000-copy press run were distributed on campus. Seven thousand went to community centers, ethnic studies departments at UC and Cal State University campuses, or were mailed to inmates at correctional facilities across the country, Hernandez said.

As the magazines’ hectic production schedules intertwine, the pace is shared by all.

When a recent production session stretched late into the night, Ha’Am managing editor Issac Bialic and half a dozen students jockeyed for positions at the three large-screen terminals shared by the magazines.

Bialic--who had gone without sleep, bathing or changing clothes since the production session started two days earlier--said deadline stress is one of the shared adversities that brings those working on the magazines closer together.

“It’s hard not to become sensitized to everyone’s causes,” said Pacific Ties editor Jo Yang. “When you look at the magazines all put together, we struggle along, pretty much the same.”