WWW- As dozens of students cheered at the campus pub last night, a defiant UC San Diego senior aired explicit sexual acts on another episode of his controversial campus television show.
It was the first episode of “Koala TV” in seven months, and was billed by student and host Steve York as “explosive” in a statement in support of student rights and National Freedom of Speech Week, taking place Oct. 17-23.
During the program, York, 22, showed about a half-hour of footage of himself engaged in sex with an unidentified adult actress.
Over the next half-hour of the show, which was live last night, York fielded nonstop telephone calls in the campus station’s studio on topics ranging from a critique of his performance to questions about why he did it and why he didn’t engage in safe sex. During the show, more than 50 students cheered and watched in amusement at the campus pub, clutching beers and alternating between staring in disbelief at the TV and averting their eyes.
Despite the show’s potential for controversy, the station managers for the new academic year had decided that they would not pull the plug on the show unless 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.
York’s show was pulled off the air in March when York stripped his clothes off during a live broadcast. That was after the student government asked the station to refrain from showing nudity. A previous much-talked-about episode, which showed York performing sexual acts with an unidentified woman, compelled hundreds of concerned students and parents to call and e-mail student leaders.
The show, which York says is in high demand on a “socially dead” campus, is broadcast on the university’s closed-circuit SRTV, which can only be viewed on campus.
The university administration has delegated to student leaders the responsibility of clarifying and enforcing SRTV’s charter, reasoning that the station’s $8,000 annual budget is funded by student fees.
The station’s charter says obscene broadcasts are not allowed on SRTV, but indecent broadcasts are, if aired between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. To be considered obscene, the material has to fulfill a three-part test: It must depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct. It must lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. And the “average person,” applying contemporary community standards, must find that the material appeals to prurient interests.
Since the show was pulled from the air in the spring, progress has been slow in changing the station’s charter. A proposed change to the charter that would have prohibited “graphic depictions of sexual activity involving nudity” was postponed indefinitely by student council members this month.
York said he plans to continue to produce the show weekly through the academic quarter.
“It offers entertainment and students talk about it,” York said. “It makes a political point given the actions of the administration to silence student government on this issue.”
An administration spokeswoman, Stacie Spector, said she had no knowledge of what York was referring to.
“No one’s done anything to silence anybody,” Spector said.