SUBJECT:

Student Run Television (SRTV)

On Thursday night, a deeply offensive and hurtful program was aired on Student Run Television (SRTV), a service of the Associated Students. The content of this program does not represent the views of the Associated Students, and was aired by KoalaTV, the television show put on by the student organization The Koala. We condemn the actions of The Koala, its program and its content.

The Koala was not properly authorized to display content on SRTV. We are in the process of determining how the program was aired. In the meantime, as authorized by the ASUCSD Standing Rules, and in conjunction with our Associate Vice President of Student Services, I turned off the station to allow for a review of its Charter. We will only open it again when we can be sure that such hateful content can never be aired again on our student funded TV station.

Alongside this initiative, I have frozen all student media organization funding. The Koala has long since been a controversial publication at UC San Diego and is primarily funded by our student fees. I do not believe we should continue funding this organization with our fees.

We must develop effective policies to ensure that our fees do not go to the support the hateful speech that targets members of our community. I ask that those media organizations that did nothing wrong and are unfairly affected to be patient until we can resolve this situation and develop new funding bylaws for our Association.

To this end, I have charged a campus-wide committee to review the funding of student media. This committee is open to every member of the UC San Diego community - faculty, staff, students, and whoever else feels strongly about this issue. The committee shall meet on Thursday, at 8:00PM, in the 4th floor Price Center Forum. Feel free to email me at aspresident@ucsd.edu if you have any questions.

The Associated Students stands in solidarity with those affected by Thursday night's program, and we remain committed to being the voice for all UC San Diego students.

Utsav Gupta Associated Students President