Back to Censorship Battle in 2001

Letter from Ernesto Martinez November, 2001

Note: All misspellings and errors are transcribed as-is.

George,
Well you may try to defend your publishing as much as you can, it still remains that the Koala is racist, homophobic, sexist, and copletely inappropiate for a place where we come to learn about each other. We must learn from each other in different ways then the way you publish your papers.

The members that I represent, which include the African American population, Asian Pacific population, Queer people of color population, as we all the Chicano and Pilipino population did find your publishing very offensive.

Now, I ask you, what is so funny about a stereotypical image of the Mammy? What? Its all in good humor? But what’s the humor? What’s the humor when our school population has less than 1% African Americans here? Image you yourself being African American and seeing the biggest stereotype of your community published in a university paper and everyone around you laughing. Imagine that you are a first year and you see this image. You are right when you say that your paper speaks to a bigger University problem, which is the lack of diversity. You are wrong when you say your paper is not racist though. Your paper perpetuate stereotypes, and continue to marginalize groups that are already underrepresented.

This is only a small piece of what you printed. I am very aware that there are many students on this campus that think the way you do, “why can’t we just laugh at ourselves?” Or “Its not that big a deal” Its not about that, its about respect. Respect for individuals right to learn in an environment where they don’t feel they’re the joke at the expense of another group. George, take some time and really listen to the complaints being presented to you. Your paper is not funny. It is offensive. I more than welcome a dialogue with you.

Ernesto Martinez
SAAC Chair

The Above Was in Response To:

To the Guardian editorial staff and all other students who have declared the Koala a forum for racism and hatred,

Please keep your puerile opinions to yourselves. Your ideas are so poorly thought out that it is an embarrassment to me to realize that you attend the same university that I do. As long as you keep your mouths shut, the rest of us can only guess at how stupid you are. Some people at this school are passionate about chemistry. Others are passionate about studying foreign cultures. The thing I feel passionately about is ensuring the rights guaranteed to every American citizen by the Bill of Rights are maintained and exercised. That's the reason that it is hard not to laugh when the UCSD Retardian editorializes on how THE KOALA is somehow misusing the Freedom of the Press. Ha. It reminds me of the time a six-year-old girl approached me and called me a "poopy-head." Intriguing, but hardly anything that is going to make me lose sleep. In hopes of exposing the UCSD student body to a glimpse of some of the inner workings of THE KOALA, I'm going to take this opportunity to respond to the characterization of THE KOALA as a platform for racism. First of all, we do not write the Personals. I want to invite all students to come by our office and see if I cannot immediately produce dozens of student Personals written in the past three weeks, either paper slips we collect through bags on campus located at Earl's Place, The Pub, Plaza Cafe and outside our office or through our e-mail account personals@thekoala.org. The Personals page is our best attempt to allow the average UCSD student to speak his/her mind in print to the rest of the student body. The Senior Staff of THE KOALA decides to publish personals based not on whether we or the rest of the student body agree with what the personal says, but rather if we feel it represents a student voice. Nobody has the right to tell me not to print the opinions of UCSD students in a paper that they fund. To the extent that any student disagrees with the message of a personal and is interested in publicly responding, allow me to suggest that such students will have a difficult time finding a platform that is as widely viewed and as open to the average student as THE KOALA's Personals page.

Secondly, there has been some controversy over the Chikes joke. I wrote that joke myself and I am a Kike. That's right. I'm Jewish. How I refer to my own people should not be an issue that offends the Guardian or anyone else. To any other Jews who are still dissatisfied with this response: lighten up. It was a joke, see? A joke? I think it's really sad to see people so uptight that they can't even laugh at themselves. If you can't laugh at yourself, you have no right to laugh at others and you certainly have no business reading THE KOALA. According to the last A.S. election, 67% of the voting student body reads THE KOALA. We got more votes than any other publication, measure or candidate (even unopposed candidates) on the entire ballot. Apparently, there is a substantial audience for the material we are printing. This indicates to me that rather than being some sort of extremist publication, we are the most centrist and widely appealing student-publication at UCSD.

Thirdly, I want to address the various student organizations that have come out and condemned THE KOALA for racism. You obviously missed one of the main points of the "Forum on the Greek System" article. It is my opinion, and I don't know how many other people agree with me, that student organizations that recruit their membership exclusively from a certain ethnic background are contributing to racism much more than the printing of a few lines of a student's opinion. These organizations are designed to create a social structure built entirely for the isolation of a certain ethnic group from the rest of the student body of UCSD. They are singling themselves out from the rest of the UCSD community and forming a "Jewish community" and dozens of splintered Asian communities at UCSD. Furthermore, when these organizations allow THE KOALA to print material that makes fun of white people, fat people, handicapped people, etc. and only take action when members of a certain ethnic group are made fun of in THE KOALA, I call that racism, straight out of Webster's dictionary. These racist organizations offend me and the idea that they have balls to accuse me of racism is truly astonishing.

I want to wrap this up with a little thought for all of those people who think that hate speech should not be published with student funds. Are you suggesting that free speech can exist without hate speech? Mind if I ask how? These ideas boil down to free speech with limits. Obviously, hate exists at UCSD. Does anyone actually think that trying to make THE KOALA censor these student opinions will do anything to make these people feel differently? Your proposal to stymie free speech on campus will only slap a Band-Aid on continued ignorance, encourage hateful people to feel angry and disenfranchised and provide an easy way to avoid dealing with race issues on real terms. This is not the solution to curing hate at UCSD. The same people who claim to want to bring everyone together into the UCSD community with kisses and love also want to exclude people whose beliefs they deem "hateful." Who gets to decide? If I decide that every word ever printed by any student paper at UCSD deeply offends me and my religious and ethnic heritage does that mean that all campus publications are now printing hate speech and should be shut down? Under the guise of being fighters for students who are hurt by THE KOALA, the UCSD Guardian and anyone else who is criticizing my editorial decisions is contributing to the weakening of every American's inalienable rights to a free press, to free expression and to free speech. That is how the Bill of Rights actually works. That is what our forefathers killed and died for, and I welcome anyone at this school, Guardian staffers included, to try to stop THE KOALA from continuing to be heard. On behalf of THE KOALA: blow me.

Sincerely,

George Lee Liddle, III
Editor-in-Chief
THE KOALA