It’s funny how far John Muir College senior Steve York has fallen in just two years. In spring 2004, he was a long-shot contender for UCSD’s student presidency, armed with a fresh endorsement from the campus’ official student paper. Last month, students saw him on Student-Run Television, ejaculating on the bare breasts of an adult movie actress.
Though the transformation probably says more about the growth of the Guardian’s editorial board and quality of its endorsements, the experience holds instructive lessons for the student body. This is especially true for those who dismiss York as a silly, destructive agitator.
In the run up to his presidential bid, York made a name for himself as an ardent critic of the University Centers fee referendum — the self-imposed student tax that is paying for the current expansion of the Student Center. Though the referendum passed, many of his worst predictions have come true: The project is grossly over budget, with many of the promises made to students likely to go unfulfilled.
Few of us listened to him at the time. It’s likely that York’s current porn broadcasts have a similarly political message — perhaps about UCSD’s lack of overall, um, fun — but even fewer are listening now. Members of the A.S. Council certainly aren’t, as each does battle with the others in an effort to earn the title of the administration’s biggest tool.
The calls for council autonomy heard so often during last year’s student elections have, for the most part, disappeared; those who spoke most passionately about it are now the ones who are most vehement in their condemnation of SRTV, essentially reading from the campus administrators’ script.
Their position creates an especially acute case of cognitive dissonance when compared to the same council’s reaction in last year’s co-op debate. At the time, university administrators made a rather mild demand, requesting that the campus’ student-run co-ops commit themselves to long-term leases. Yet rabid councilmembers went off the edge, threatening to retain their own lawyer and jumping into the fray, bogging the controversy in more than a year of apparently fruitless talks.
But when sex hit the airwaves, the council was only too happy to disregard its own grievance procedures adopted last spring, opting instead to take the words of the campus’ counsel — not an independent attorney — as gospel and rush to pass blanket regulations restricting televised content. Last week, they even took the station off the air.
The reaction is particularly surprising, given that SRTV is the A.S. Council’s own service while the co-ops have largely tried to keep the student government at arm’s length.
In the case of the co-ops, though, the university actually had a reasonable point. At least some of the co-ops, like the Che Cafe, appeared to use their previous, complicated space agreement to operate with disregard for environmental laws, such as dumping waste into sewer drains. When university officials demanded that the problems be addressed, the co-ops used the complicated conflict adjudication process in their lease to turn the controversy into a bureaucratic nightmare.
SRTV, though, violated no law. Its members simply broadcast a political message, one that may have hit too close to home for members of the A.S. Council, who have done everything they can to suppress it. After all, if students must turn to amateur porn for entertainment, what does that say about the so-called programming and student opportunities the A.S. Council spends student fees each year to fund?
Most of the blame should be dumped at the feet of Kian Maleki, who served as A.S. commissioner of student services last spring, when porn was first broadcast on SRTV. When he first ran for the office, Maleki didn’t even know what his office did.
Last year, he went — in a single month — from being an ardent supporter of SRTV independence and its ability to broadcast anything producers want, nude or not, to a zealot moralist opposed to porn. Maleki’s bumbling handling of the mess has only complicated the options for current Commissioner of Student Services Maurice Junious.
Another difference may be that former A.S. President Jenn Pae was simply a stronger leader than her successor, Christopher Sweeten, whose panicky pleadings to councilmembers leave much to be desired.
With SRTV now off the air, students must pose some questions: Why should they continue paying for a so-called “service” that can broadcast only the political messages approved by their student government? Can they still trust their student government to spend $1.5 million in student fees when it has come to rely on unconstitutional meetings and parliamentary procedures that stack the deck in favor of specific points of view?
If students answer as I think they will, I predict some civil disobedience next month, when the university comes to collect a second-quarter’s worth of activity fees to give to the council. After all, what better way is there to change behavior than through monetary incentives and fear of economic sanctions?
Though the A.S. Council pulled the plug on SRTV last week, it won’t be long before the student body pulls the plug on the council.
York’s pornomentary is rife with meaningful messages, and members of the A.S. Council best take good notes. After all, if they’re not careful, York may not be the only one who finds himself with his pants down.
