UCSD Student Government Lifts Media Freeze

On Wednesday night the Associated Students of UCSD Council voted to lift the temporary freeze on funding to student media outlets that had effectively shut down the majority of campus media outlets for the past two weeks.

The freeze was initiated by ASUCSD president Utsav Gupta in response to a series of racially incendiary incidents surrounding an off campus party called “The Compton Cookout.”  The Center and our allies roundly condemned the freeze as an unconstitutional attempt by a student government to silence press it disagreed with.  ASUCSD had planned to use the freeze to discuss new funding guidelines likely to limit the speech of student media.

For now cooler heads have prevailed both lifting the freeze and voting down any change to the current funding system.  But the UCSD Guardian reports that the incidents have led the UC Regents to consider system-wide restrictions on student media.  Along with our allies the Center for Campus Free Speech will watching the situation to see if there is any truth to this worrying proposition.