AMY SALISBURY
PRIDE STAFF WRITER

Students in the Women’s Studies department at Cal State San Marcos last week launched a petition drive to push for university action on the “hateful, obscene and prejudicial content” in the controversial student-run Koala newspaper.

The petition drive, along with the launch of a student-run anti- Koala Facebook page, are in response to the publication of the Koala’s fifth CSUSM issue on Sept. 27, which promoted on its front page “homophobia, misogyny (and) pornography.”

One page led with the line “Women secretly want to be raped,” and another featured a pornographic photo with the picture of a Women’s Studies student superimposed on a woman in the picture.

The petition seeks 1,000 signatures to lobby university officials to control the hate speech in the Koala, restrict its on-campus distribution and eliminate the atmosphere of intimidation and harassment associated with its content and distribution.

Kit-Bacon Gressitt, a CSUSM Women’s Studies student and freelance reporter, wrote the petition, called “Act Against Hate at Cal State University San Marcos,” hosted by change.org. The opening statement of the petition claims that “the lack of action by the University to directly counter the effects of the Koala has created a hostile environment in the CSUSM community that is intimidating and fear inducing.”

So far, university officials have not taken an official stance on the Koala—a for-profit, privately owned enterprise that also publishes at San Diego State University and UC San Diego—but the Dean of Students Office did launch a campus Civility Campaign in September. And on Oct. 20, President Karen Haynes issued a statement encouraging students to speak out on Spirit Day against bullying and student marginalization.

We recognize that there may be instances that while protected by the First Amendment, are contrary to CSUSM’s core values of diversity and inclusion,” Haynes wrote in her blog on the university website.

The Koala, which bills itself as a “satirical comedy newspaper,” was first published at UCSD in 1982 and later expanded to SDSU. At both universities, the Koala obtained early recognition as an official student organization but had its status removed at SDSU after violating campus regulations.

The Koala debuted in January 2011 at Cal State San Marcos but has yet to obtain student organization status from CSUSM’s Associated Students, Inc. (ASI). This month, Travis Wilson, president of CSUSM’s ASI, issued a statement condemning hate speech and hate crimes, saying, “ASI adamantly opposes any form of language or behavior which can be construed as hate.”

Student response to the Koala has been mixed. On the day its September issue was published, a group of students from the Women’s Studies department covered the sidewalks and stairs of the campus Free Speech areas with chalk art singling out by name the Koala’s student editors and condemning hate speech.

And on a Facebook event page launched a few weeks ago, “Sign the Petition Against The Koala @ CSUSM,” several students voiced their concerns about the content of the publication.

“I am tired of the Koala at CSUSM,” María Bacca, a CSUSM student and creator of the events page, wrote.

“If [CSUSM is] a campus that cares about community, then the voice of that community should be heard,” Literature and Writing Graduate student Jeff Schoneman said in an interview. “There should be a safe structure or space created where people can address those ideas [in the Koala] with the people who are actually writing them to see how truly weak the logic behind those assertions is.”

Sociology master’s student Flora Seawood said in an interview that she is shocked to hear of the Koala’s content.

Seawood described the publication as counterproductive and contrary to the university’s purpose. “The administration needs to recognize that,” she added.