More Talk, Not Less

Cal State Northridge is known as a commuter school, and commuter schools, by their nature, are not known as hotbeds of student activism. Who’s got the time, shuttling among classes, jobs and families?

So when a protest does erupt, like the one last week over an editorial in the student newspaper, it tends to get one’s attention.

The controversy touched on so many hot-button issues--the role of remedial classes at colleges, the use of student fees, what constitutes free speech and, underlying it all, the charged subject of race and racism--it’s hard to know where to start sorting it out.

But it’s crucial that the university community try.

The Sundial editorial called for Cal State campuses to stop admitting students who require remedial English or math classes. That’s controversial in itself. Roughly half of California freshmen in 1998 required remedial math or English classes. At CSUN, the percentages are even higher: 63% of all freshmen required remedial math and 59% required remedial English.

But what caused the protest was Latino students’ belief that the strongly worded editorial, which began with the headline “How Did They Get Here in the First Place?” and ended with the admonition to “pull the weed out by its root,” was aimed at them. Among Latino freshmen at CSUN, 75% required remedial math last fall and 70% remedial English. Minority students have been among the most ardent critics of a new state measure, which went into effect last fall, giving freshmen a year to pass remedial classes or face expulsion--a measure ridiculed in the editorial as not being stringent enough.

No ethnic group is named in the editorial, and the Sundial editor denied charges of racism. Unconvinced, members of MEChA, or Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, are calling for the Sundial’s funding to be cut.

Like most campus papers, the Sundial receives student fees, which opens up a whole other can of worms. Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court this week is hearing arguments that students should be able to “opt out” of funding groups and causes that they oppose, much like newspaper subscribers can cancel their subscriptions when they don’t like a paper’s stand. (In a twist from the CSUN imbroglio, in the Supreme Court case it’s a conservative student who opposes fees and liberal groups that defend them.)

Students who support remedial education, whether minorities or not, may not like the Sundial editorial’s stand or choice of words, but the solution is not to cut funding for the paper. The way out of this upheaval is not less talk, but more.

A university newspaper--the university itself--is a needed public forum. Even if students disagree with what a newspaper’s editorial says--or how it says it--the newspaper can and should make room on its opinion pages for differing views. Students can and should use the paper to voice their views on remedial education and the use of student fees, the rights and responsibilities of free speech and, yes, that most difficult subject, race.

Surely CSUN professors recognize this as the teaching moment it is. Surely, the university can provide a forum to discuss these issues. If not, this won’t be the last protest to erupt, even at a quiet campus like CSUN.