Your University of California Tax Dollars At Work

As the father of a junior in high school, college is very much on my mind, and one of the schools that was briefly considered was UCSD, the University of California San Diego. I think we can now rule that one out:

Last week, the university television station last week aired lengthy footage of a student having sex with an adult actress, seven months after the show was pulled for racy programming.

"Koala TV," hosted by 22-year-old University of California, San Diego senior Steve York, returned to the air last Thursday evening. The show had been pulled in March when York stripped naked during a live broadcast even though the student government asked the station to refrain from showing nudity.

A previous episode showing York performing sex acts with an unidentified woman resulted in a flood of calls and e-mails to the station from concerned students and parents.

In March, the Associated Students Council decided that Koala TV was inappropriate. At that time, the council said it would clarify obscenity guidelines for the station and establish a grievance and investigative procedure.

The new student managers of the closed-circuit station, which can only be viewed on campus, decided to allow the show to air provided no students were put in physical danger.

"Our primary mission is to provide students with a means of producing films and productions. We don't want to stand in the way of creative freedom," said Andrew Tess, a station manager at UCSD's Student Run Television and a fifth-year bioengineering major.

Hugh Hewitt has been all over this, and today interviewed the pervert student involved. That interview will be up at Radioblogger. The student council, after some embarrassing publicity, finally voted to ban porn videos from the student TV station:

Sexually explicit programming will no longer be allowed on the student-run closed circuit television station at the University of California, San Diego. The UCSD Associate Student Council voted Wednesday night to ban sex videos after listening to students debate the issue. The move by the council came after a pornographic video ran several times in the last few months. Steven York, who made the video and appears in it, calls the programming "Koala TV."

The council originally voted to ban sex videos over the weekend, but then declared the vote void on Monday, after members realized they had not followed parliamentary procedures.

That ban, however, did not stop the idiot student from running his video, this time with a twist:

One day after the A.S. Council passed an Oct. 23 amendment banning pornographic images from being aired on Student-Run Television, John Muir College senior Steve York rebroadcast a video with an overlaid image of an A.S. senator in place of the adult-film actress featured in the clip.

The face of Thurgood Marshall Senior Senator Kate Pillon, a staunch supporter of the ban against “graphic sexual activity involving nudity” on SRTV, was seen in place of the actress engaged in sex with York when the video was replayed on Oct. 27. York, who spoke of his disapproval of the amendment at the Oct. 26 A.S. Council meeting, had warned councilmembers that they “could not win” the battle of censorship when it came to free speech and SRTV content.

As Hugh points out, this little stunt provides enough tortious conduct to keep a personal injury lawyer in business for years. It's too bad Steve York doesn't have any adults in his life who can pin his ears back a time or two and make him grow up.

UPDATE: I've been thinking a little more about this situation, and it's shocking to me (and many others) that no one in the Administration sought to intervene and confront this guy about his porn film. I can come up with two reasons why that might be:

1. The school really is run by a bunch of diehard liberals who think any sort of expression is a good thing and must not be in any way stifled; or,
2. The school is run by a bunch of chickens who are petrified at the thought of confronting a student where a 'civil rights' issue might be at stake. I'm tending to go with #2, for if the administration confronts the student, they risk being called "intolerant" by their peers, and that's almost a fate worse than death in the cloistered academic community. If these people had any guts...and if they had the basically ability to recognize right and wrong (another important element)...they would have jumped on this guy a long time ago and we wouldn't be talking about it now.

Unfortunately, when state schools do decide to intervene in student expression, it's usually for the wrong reason, as in the case of the Wisconsin school which has banned dorm Resident Assistants from conducting Bible studies in their rooms and on their own time. The school fears that the RA's who conduct such studies might not be seen as "approachable". Give me a break.