Media board considers firing campus newspaper editor over parody issue
By The Associated Press
06.20.02
DAVIS, Calif. — The spoof issue of the University of California, Davis, student newspaper, an annual mix of mischief and journalism, has sparked complaints about sexual and racial references. The flap could lead to an overhaul of the paper's operations and a firing of the editor in chief.
Responding to complaints about the year-end parody section, the student-dominated Campus Media Board agreed June 18 to consider firing the editor in chief, Fitz Vo.
Vo assumed leadership of the California Aggie on June 1. The section that triggered the complaints, a six-page insert called "The Ivory Basement," appeared June 7, the last day of regular classes.
One of the most controversial items was an image of a phallic symbol digitally superimposed in the middle of a photo of children playing on the campus' two "egghead" sculptures.
Another photo showed a white student holding a knife while eyeing an African-American student who was the student government president last year.
Alice Hannam, a UC Davis staff member who is head of the media board, called the section "mean-spirited, incredibly juvenile and, in a couple instances, ugly."
Vo, a 20-year-old majoring in communications and math, said he was guilty of lapses in judgment. The Vietnamese-American junior, who listed himself in the parody issue as "editor in chink," said the issue was "not indicative of what I intend to do in my tenure at the Aggie."
Vo asked the board to let him stay on the job and consider hiring a faculty adviser to work with the newspaper. Vo said he didn't want "to jeopardize the Aggie's journalistic integrity."
This isn't the first outcry over the annual parody edition at the UC Davis newspaper. In the late 1990s, a cartoon depicted an explosion at Hart Hall, a building housing ethnic-studies departments.
The Los Angeles Times reported that school officials responded to that controversy by establishing a newspaper policy on handling sensitive issues, launching a journalism writing course, and making the parody issue the responsibility of the incoming editor instead of the outgoing, and possibly graduating, editor.