San Diego- UC San Diego students voted last week to allow sex on a campus television station - but it may have been in vain.
Some administrators said yesterday they were disappointed by the outcome, and will not change the decision to ban graphic sex, including nudity, from the Student-Run Television Station aired on campus cable and a campus Web site.
Sixteen percent of undergraduates participated in the 1,708-1,446 vote, taken over the past week via the Internet.
"It wasn't a landslide," said Gary Ratcliff, acting assistant vice chancellor for student life. "Our view is the majority of students support the values of the university and they don't believe the (campus cable network) should be a forum for airing pornographic material."
He added that allowing students to decide what to show on a student-run television station was akin to students voting on how much the university ought to pay faculty.
"It's just not within their authority," Ratcliff said.
Ratcliff's perspective, however, conflicts with that of University of California San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox.
"We're not taking a position on content," Fox said in an interview Monday. "We've never said we're controlling content."
Some students have interpreted the results differently from the administration, calling the outcome a strong mandate and threatening to take legal action if the university doesn't abide by the majority vote.
"The students spoke, as far as I'm concerned," said Steve York, a former UCSD student who instigated much of the controversy on his racy show, "Koala TV." York said he will see the issue to its end, even though he completed his course work last quarter.
For nearly a year, administrators and student leaders have struggled over how to deal with controversial broadcasts on SRTV, which can be viewed on closed-circuit television by the roughly 8,000 students living on campus.
Beginning last February, "Koala TV" featured intermittent episodes of pornographic material. A particularly controversial episode aired in October, in which York, 22, engaged in sex with a paid adult-film actress posing as a UCSD student.
For months, the university took a hands-off approach and allowed the student government to deal with the situation. Student leaders voted to ban sex from the station, and then reversed their votes twice, ultimately leading York and students to gather signatures for a special election.
The station was taken off the air in November, and administrators say it will not return until student leaders rewrite the station's charter to increase student accountability and ensure rules will not be broken in the future. Administrators, including Fox, say the decision to pull the plug on the station is not censorship.
Some legal scholars say it's unclear which side has the upper hand. While federal courts have traditionally sided with student media in free speech battles, more recent cases have allowed universities to control content produced in university facilities, said California Western School of Law professor Robert Dekoven.
