They packed the university pub a little more tightly than usual for a Thursday night.

Some of the University of California, San Diego students laughed and cheered. Others turned away in embarrassment at what they saw on the television screen before them: fellow UCSD student Steve York engaging in explicit sexual acts with a female actress on a university-owned, student-run television station.

Less than two months later, SRTV disappeared from campus – by order of the students.

‘I was just doing it to have fun, and then it ballooned into this gigantic debate,’ said York, a senior history major at UCSD.

Much like the cancellation of HillTV at Syracuse University, the incident at UCSD raised questions about how much power the students and the administration should wield when making decisions about university-owned, student-run media.

Unlike SU, UCSD is a public university, which means the First Amendment prohibits school administrators from censoring student-edited media. In California, the ‘Leonard Law’ allows students attending private universities to have the same free speech protections as students at public universities, said Mike Hiestand, a legal consultant to the Student Press Law Center.

The First Amendment, however, only prohibits government censorship and does not limit administrators at private universities from censoring university-owned student media, Hiestand said.

At a public university, the decision is left up to the student editors to decide which material is appropriate to broadcast or publish, he said.

At UCSD, the administration handed the fate of York’s program, ‘Koala TV,’ and Student-Run Television, the name of the station, to the school’s student leaders, after it found the show did not violate the First Amendment.

SRTV received funding delegated by Associated Students, UCSD’s student government, from the students’ activity fee and ran on a closed-circuit network. The station received $8,000 this year from AS, said Lauren Weiner the AS faculty adviser.

‘The university administration investigated the issue and noted that the broadcast violated the SRTV charter and our university’s ‘Principles of Community’ … We shared our findings with the AS leaders and advised them of their need to take a stance about the broadcast,’ wrote UCSD Chancellor Marye Anne Fox in a statement on the university’s Web site.

The university acknowledges and promotes the right to freedom of expression ‘within the bounds of courtesy, sensitivity, confidentiality and respect,’ according to the UCSD ‘Principles of Community.’

Though the First Amendment protects content like ‘Koala TV’s,’ SRTV shows must run within the context of UCSD policy and Federal Communications Commission regulations, the station’s charter states.

The only people who have complained about the show come from outside the university and did not see the episodes, York said. In one ‘Koala TV’ episode, students called in and praised the members of the show.

Weiner disagreed, saying about 60 students have petitioned AS to refund part of their student fee because of ‘Koala TV’s’ content. Each week after the episode’s initial showing, more and more students came to AS meetings and complained about the show, she said.

SRTV is considered a service of AS, which means SRTV differs from a student organization in that its charter can only be altered by AS. Student organizations, meanwhile, are allowed to change their charters by themselves, Weiner said.

‘The administration was pretty mad,’ said AS Commissioner of Student Services Maurice Junious, who oversees SRTV operations, ‘and they were telling the AS president, ‘Whatever happens, happens. But if you guys can’t resolve it, we’re going to take this away.”

The council passed a ban on sexually explicit content for the station and barred the members of ‘Koala TV’ from the station after the broadcast in late October. When Junious found these rules were being violated, he made the decision to pull the plug on the station with the intent of turning it back on the next day. The university’s administration, however, refused, because of repeated problems.

‘When I turned the station off, I felt like I was protecting it from the university in case anything happened, so they wouldn’t turn it off,’ Junious said. ‘Ever since then, we’ve been dealing with the administration.’

If York and the SRTV staff took their case against the administration to court, the ruling would probably be in favor of the students, Hiestand said.

‘From everything that I’ve seen, the excuses that the administration is giving in San Diego is shams,’ he said. ‘I think it’s pretty clear that if the students were to challenge this in court, they pretty clearly would win.’

At SU, HillTV members underwent an appeal process in which a panel of tenured faculty members considered the former station’s appeal to reinstate the station. The panel, which released its decision on Wednesday, overruled Cantor’s decision to disband the station. Meanwhile, York has gathered 2,600 signatures from several members of various student organizations and others to petition for a special AS election that would overturn the sex ban and allow the ‘Koala TV’ students back into the station.

‘We’re trying to address all our options instead of just going to court,’ York said. ‘We’re fighting against the administration and getting the students involved.’

AS has joined SRTV and the other UCSD students in this battle, Junious said.

‘Before, it was students fighting students,’ he said. ‘We have to come together.’

Some SU students believe the administration made rash decisions about HillTV and should have allowed the student government to take control of the situation. Freshman broadcast journalism major Steve Andress, who was training with the HillTV sports department before the station’s disbandment, created a ‘Save HillTV’ group on Facebook.com to draw support for the station.

‘I really felt at the time only one side of the story had been heard,’ he said in an interview conducted before the release of the panel’s decision. ‘(The Facebook group) gave the opportunity for people to voice their opinions about their disagreement with the (chancellor’s) decision.’

For now, SRTV remains off the air. York continues to host some ‘Koala TV’ content, including a full-length version of the porn episode, on his personal Web site. The site serves as a vessel so others can come to their own conclusions about the situation, he said.

‘The university has given absolutely no clarification as to what would constitute satisfactory operation of the station,’ York said. ‘It could be (off the air) forever.’

Published on December 1, 2005 at 12:00 pm