The Orange County Register
| Story appeared in the Local section on page C ID: 40612416 Illustration: Edition: 1 Correction: |
Controversial ad is anything but at CSUFEducation A paid notice in the school newspaper denouncing slavery reparations gets little attention on campus.
March 23, 2001
Byline:
Credit: MARLA JO FISHER
FULLERTON A college newspaper ad that created a national uproar by denouncing the idea of paying blacks reparations for slavery generated a very different reaction when it ran in the California State University, Fullerton, Daily Titan:Indifference.
Friday’s full-page ad, by political commentator David Horowitz, was titled “Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea — and Racist Too.”Among his 10 reasons: Blacks have benefited from the long-term effects of slavery, and the nation has already paid benefits to blacks in the forms of welfare and affirmative action.Black students at the University of California, Berkeley, were enraged when the ad appeared this month, leading the newspaper to publish a front-page apology for printing it.Students at Brown University stole the campus newspaper’s entire press run of 4,000, leading to outcry on the campus over the issue of censorship.The ad sparked debate around the country, including in Arizona, where campus newspapers at the University of Arizona and Arizona State University ran the ad, with ASU later apologizing for running what it described as a “one-sided argument.”But at Cal State Fullerton, the managing editor of the Daily Titan said he didn’t know about the ad until after it appeared.Although no students complained, managing editor Vu Nguyen said he was unhappy that he wasn’t alerted about the ad’s content beforehand, especially since it had generated so much controversy on other campuses.He theorized that the ad wasn’t noticed because of low readership of the Friday paper on the commuter campus.“Not too many people noticed here, but the main person who made a stink was me,” Nguyen said, “because I’m a minority student myself, and I don’t want to read things like that in our paper.”Nguyen said he also was displeased that the text-heavy ad ran next to the paper’s editorial page, and without a disclaimer identifying it as an advertisement.The Daily Titan’s business manager, Joel Helgesen, said he doesn’t review every ad that runs in the paper, and this particular piece went from the sales executive to the production crew without his approval.“I didn’t know the content of it, unfortunately,” Helgesen said.A full-page ad in the Daily Titan sells for $945, he said.“I have not personally heard any response to it or comments from anyone,” Helgesen said.While Fullerton students didn’t kick up a fuss about the ad, it did provide fodder for classroom discussion, Nguyen said.“All the journalism students are talking about it because their professors are,” he said.
Contact Fisher at (714) 796-7994 or mfisher@ocregister.com
To read the text of the advertisement, go to Horowitz’s Web site at:www.frontpagemag.com
To learn more about slavery reparations,visit: www.multiracial.com/issues/issues-slavery.html