Maurice Junious is a man stuck in the middle.

On one hand, the A.S. commissioner of student services has ultimate oversight over Student-Run Television, a service recently thrust into the national spotlight because of a debate station managers say hinges on free speech rights.

On the other hand, Junious’ post requires an obligation to fellow councilmembers, most of whom have demanded student government control over the station.

While the two issues have been far from compatible, Junious’ final decision took the form of an October amendment to the station’s charter that he drafted prohibiting graphic nudity.

“This is an issue of legitimacy,” Junious said. “I’m not trying to limit anybody. But at the same time, the [SRTV] charter was an issue and I wanted to find a way the charter works where things can run responsibly.”

The proposal was a temporary fix to an unresolved mess left by last year’s council, Junious said.

“I came in at a time when nothing was solved,” he said. “We needed time to fix the charter, and my amendment gave us that time.”

Considering the situation, Junious is doing a good job dealing with a problem that has been growing since last year, according to A.S. President Christopher Sweeten.

“I think compared to last year … Maurice is doing an appropriate job in how he’s handling the matter,” Sweeten said. “Last year, I think student services wanted to do things more appropriately and more quickly in response, whereas Maurice wants to do things at more business pace … allowing things to come up and be processed on and so forth.”

Junious’ proposed ban on nudity was indefinitely tabled until John Muir College senior Steve York showed a second pornographic film on SRTV last month. Three days later, Junious’ amendment was passed. The decision did not follow the media grievance process, created by Maleki, which was designed to “allow students to have their grievances when they had a problem with the media,” Maleki said.

The council’s decision not to address his broadcasts through the grievance process was illegitimate, according to York.

“There was no meeting over the first [pornography], there was no agreement or anything or stuff filed against the first one,” York said. “They should have gone through grievance procedure. You can’t just jump to a conclusion like that [and] make a fake amendment.”

But for Junious, the media grievance procedure is meant to be used as a “reactive process,” which would not have solved problems with the flawed charter.

“[The amendment] was front-end protection so that we would not have to pull the plug on SRTV, and [so that we could] have time to work with the charter,” Junious said. “It might have seemed really stupid at the time to just have that amendment out of nowhere, and I think that’s why it got voted down at first, because councilmembers didn’t really understand why it was there.”

York’s subsequent airing of pornography forced councilmembers to realize the importance of buying time to fix the charter, Junious said.

“I think people started realizing, ‘Oh, that’s why we needed the amendment there,’” Junious said. “Pornography would happen in between the time that we’re working with SRTV to fix the charter.”

However, there are problems with the wording of Junious’ amendment, which bans “graphic depictions of sexual activity involving nudity,” according to SRTV co-Manager Tiffany Rapp.

“I think something more specific needs to be drafted … Graphic sex [and] nudity are vague terms,” Rapp said. “It might limit a lot of artistic freedom.”

Junious is now acting as the enforcer of those limitations, after the council approved a bill that placed the power of keeping “Koala TV” members away from SRTV into his hands. The bill, Junious said, goes a long way toward diminishing the power of SRTV student managers, but puts the commissioner position where it belongs: in the middle of the fray.

“I need to be accountable,” he said. “I understand how difficult it is for the SRTV managers. If our decisions as a council or as a service are wrong or right, [the blame] should be on me and not them.”

But Junious’ decisions have created a gap between him and his own service, according to Rapp.

“I don’t know if he’s been helpful, but I think he’s concerned about SRTV,” Rapp said. “He’s trying to make a solution to make everyone happy.”

Because the station defied the council’s authority, Junious said he was forced into a last resort — shutting down SRTV indefinitely.

“I could be there all weekend or someone from A.S. could be there all weekend to enforce the rules, which isn’t feasible,” Junious said. “If people aren’t going to act responsibly with their jobs, then I can’t have them in the studio, and I definitely can’t trust them to do their jobs if they haven’t been doing them. Everybody I talked to … knows that’s not how I wanted it, but the same thing keeps happening [and] I didn’t really feel like I had a choice.”