CSUN Senator Changes Mind on Duke Invitation

Cal State Northridge student senator Mark Short, who earlier this month cast one of the deciding votes to invite former Ku Klux Klansman David Duke to campus for a debate next week on Proposition 209, told the senate on Tuesday he had changed his mind.

The original vote in the Senate was an 11-11 tie, broken by the student body president in favor of inviting Duke. Short said Tuesday he wanted to change his yes vote, which would have effectively uninvited the former Ku Klux Klansman.

The Senate would have none of it.

“It was a courageous move to [try to] rescind his vote,” Senate President Vladimir Cerna said later. But he said if the Senate had allowed the vote reversal, it would have been roundly criticized by students and probably would have had to pay Duke his $4,000 fee anyway.

Short’s late-hour attempt to keep Duke out of the Sept. 25 debate was halted not by more bitter debate or warnings of deeper on-campus division over the measure, which would ban affirmative action policies in state and local government.

In the end, it was held up by the late timing and technicalities.

According to university bylaws, a new vote cannot be held if any action has already been taken toward carrying out an earlier motion. The student body’s attorney general said that CSUN had already taken such action by signing a contract with Duke.

Short’s only apparent route around that rule was a vote to suspend it. Such a vote, however, needed a two-thirds majority to pass.

His effort died on a vote of 10 to 10.

The Senate’s vote earlier this month to invite Duke, a Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Louisiana, made news across the country. Some applauded the young politicians for encouraging free speech, while others lambasted them for granting a onetime Klan Wizard a highly visible pulpit.

Somewhere amid the charges and counter-charges of racism, political theater and media-baiting that followed, Short changed his mind.

“It wasn’t the pressure, it was the ethics,” the soft-spoken Short said, explaining his philosophical reversal to fellow senators and the nearly full gallery at an afternoon meeting. “I don’t want to be associated with Willie Horton-style politics.”

He changed his mind, Short said, because although he disagrees with the pro-Proposition 209 forces, they were being unfairly painted as racists by having a former Klan member represent them.

“While it hadn’t occurred to me at first that there would be a negative association of Duke with the pro-Prop. 209 position, I was initially glad to see that develop,” said Short. “However, I am increasingly uncomfortable with the ethics of any negative association.”

In a rambling statement that included criticism of the federal General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade for allegedly contributing to starvation in Africa, Short said the political left is as guilty of promoting racially discriminatory policies as the right.

Short, who said the brouhaha had been emotionally tiring, also feared that the “popular spectacle” of a debate involving Duke would in the end do little to further serious debate over the anti-affirmative action measure.

Student senator Zoey Freeburn, who sat next to Short on Tuesday but voted against suspending the rules to allow him to change his vote, said she believed a debate that pits Duke against Joe Hicks, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Multicultural Collaborative, would lead to more understanding of the anti-affirmative action measure.

And she said most of the students she knows support Duke’s participation.

“I was elected by students to represent students,” she said.

Times staff writer Andrew Blankstein contributed to this story.