Want to bait the administration? Look no further than airing homemade pornography on Student-Run Television. Need a trite justification? Cite free speech rights.
Ah, if only it worked as intended. Unfortunately, Koala editor and A.S. Elections Manager Steve York’s televised encounter could come back to haunt both him and the entire institution of SRTV.
Pushing the envelope of obscenity is hardly the way to make a legitimate point about students’ free-speech rights; instead, it’s an invitation to censorship by an administration that had no problem with temporarily canning Student-Run Television once before.
That’s not to say, however, that the administration should even bother to censure SRTV because of the incident. Censorship, punishment, or even a shutdown won’t protect SRTV’s members from their own foolishness. If SRTV has any sense of self-preservation, it will use this incident as incentive to put together a system of programming oversight. Those in charge of SRTV’s programming showed a surprising lack of judgment in allowing the video to air. That’s not because the segment was necessarily offensive, obscene, or unsavory to SRTV’s viewers, but because they should’ve known the video would land them in hot water with the administration, and the inevitable fight simply isn’t worth a few minutes of mediocre pornography.
In other words, the controversial segment is the excuse the administration needs to tighten its noose on SRTV. Remember last year, when SRTV claimed that someone broke into the station and aired pornographic material? The station implied that someone with a grudge was looking to get SRTV in trouble with the administration or prank the station, because the station was normally above airing pornography.
Yet York, either disingenuously or ignorantly, claims this video was aired to highlight free-speech concerns. If freedom — of speech or otherwise — is the goal, airing pornographic segments is a nearly foolproof way to ensure that SRTV’s freedom will be restricted. York should stick to crude sex acts and leave the philosophizing about free speech to people who can tell interesting programming from televised cries for attention.
The sad truth is that if SRTV doesn’t police itself, the administration will gladly step in and rule SRTV with more of an iron fist than before. SRTV exists solely because it claims to enrich student life with interesting programming that builds community among students, while publicizing campus events, organizations and the like. Bellicose tactics like those currently being employed, however, make SRTV a “controversial service,” as A.S. Commissioner of Student Services Kian Maleki characterized it, and more prone to cutbacks or complete shutdown.
Clearly, airing the pornographic tape was popular — or at least a worthy topic of conversation — among students, yet the complete opposite of what the administration would like to see the station airing. Obviously both sides can’t have their way, and in a perfect world, the administration would tolerate all the silliness that results when programming is created by, and geared toward, students. But the station’s current oppositional strategy merely deepens the rift between students (insofar as SRTV represents students) and the administration, with students being the ones who lack relative power and stand to lose.
The continued existence of SRTV is predicated on the concept that we, as intelligent college students, can police ourselves. Clearly, this concept is lost on a few exhibitionists, so it would be in the station’s best interest to put together some oversight for its programming, and to fend off attacks from the administration with a promise to avoid airing programs created for their outrageousness and nothing else.
Maybe stupidity will be its own punishment and the administration will allow the station to continue as normal. But a rebuke from the authorities might be the kick in the pants the station needs to display some common sense in the future.
According to SRTV’s charter, it is permissible to air videos like York’s, but that doesn’t make it a good idea. Failing to recognize this distinction could be the station’s downfall. Managers of SRTV, and especially York’s ilk, would do well to focus less on what they can legally get away with, and more on showing decent programs built on more than shock value and the possibility of garnering infamy for the creator.
