Duke Debate Tickets Sell Out; Protests Rise

The final batch of tickets for Wednesday’s affirmative action debate at Cal State Northridge was snapped up Tuesday, as a last-ditch legal challenge by Proposition 209 proponents failed to block the debate.

More than 100 students were lined up outside the CSUN Student Union when the ticket office opened at 9:30 a.m. By noon, all 430 tickets for a closed-circuit television viewing of the debate--which pits ex-Klansman David Duke against civil rights activist Joe Hicks--were gone.

The participation by Duke, an avowed racist who has run for political office in Louisiana, has sparked unprecedented interest on and off the campus and provoked emotional demonstrations among students. Groups that support Proposition 209, aimed at outlawing affirmative action by state and local government agencies, contend that Duke was invited as a ploy by student opponents of the measure to tarnish the proposition by associating it with the racist Ku Klux Klan.

At a rally and student government meeting Tuesday, several student organizations protested Duke’s appearance. Some threatened to try to block the debate, scheduled for 2 p.m., while others called for greater participation by students in the debate.

A demonstration by a UC Berkeley-based group, the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action by Any Means Necessary, almost led to violence, as angry CSUN students shouted down a few coalition demonstrators who were urging students to disrupt the debate.

Scott Reed, an organizer with the Berkeley group, said he expects hundreds of protesters to rally at the college today in an attempt to block Duke’s appearance.

Reed and others passed out leaflets Tuesday urging students to join a demonstration outside the University Student Union at 1 p.m. today.

Later, at a student senate meeting, members of the campus Republican club said they have signatures of 2,500 students who want to recall Senate President Vladimir Cerna, who helped organize the debate.

Meanwhile, Superior Court Judge William MacLaughlin again rejected a request by Proposition 209 supporters for a temporary restraining order to block the debate.

In a related development in Burbank on Tuesday, a state legislative committee held the first of four informational hearings on Proposition 209.

Neil Gotanda, a law professor at Western State University in Fullerton, presented the results of a study conducted last summer by the college’s law review students, which Gotanda said suggested that the initiative could cause “sweeping changes at every level of California education.”

Gotanda said passage of the proposition could jeopardize a broad array of public educational programs, among them: university courses in ethnic and women’s studies; outreach, recruitment and scholarship programs targeted at women or minorities; and even school celebrations of ethnic holidays such as Cinco de Mayo.

Tom Wood, a co-author of the proposition who testified at the hearing, dismissed Gotanda’s contention that the initiative could end ethnic and women’s studies or school observations of ethnic holidays. As long as those involved in such programs were not restricted according to race, nationality or gender, the celebrations could continue, Wood said.

Times staff writer Martha Willman contributed to this story.