Cal State Northridge Leaders Criticized in Debate’s Aftermath

It was a lesson in free speech all right, but not exactly what the student leaders at Cal State Northridge had in mind.

They wielded the banner of free speech to defend their controversial decision to invite ex-Klansman David Duke to speak on campus, then watched as the Wednesday debate was overshadowed by a melee between police and demonstrators outside the debate hall.

Then, on Thursday, they heard themselves condemned in a noisy campus protest as supporters of racism. They accepted it, on the grounds that just as they extended free speech to an avowed racist like Duke, they had to extend it to his left-wing opponents as well.

“It feels like I have somebody standing on my front lawn screaming at me, and I can’t make them leave,” lamented student senator Phillip Leonard, who helped organize the controversial debate on affirmative action.

This time, the campus protest stopped short of violence. Instead, Cal State Northridge students shouted down visitors from a Bay Area student group called Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action by Any Means Necessary.

The Northern California group spent two weeks on campus trying to derail the debate, and returned Thursday to berate the Northridge students for letting Duke have his say.

Many students blamed the Bay Area group for inciting much of the violence that led to six arrests and several minor injuries in the melee.

And in Thursday’s emotional confrontation, it was important to them to salvage the campus’ reputation, which they said had been sullied by rock-throwing demonstrators.

“A lot of people--even people who didn’t want David Duke here--worked very hard to make sure the debate went off without trouble,” said film student Jeremy Padow. “Then they show up and disrupt everything . . . make it into a big circus.”

The students, on the whole, commended themselves and the police for acting appropriately, and squarely laid the blame for the violence on the Bay Area activists and other outsiders. Only one Cal State Northridge student was among the six arrested Wednesday.