University of Oregon Media - Student Media Controversies

Student Media Controversies

Controversy has occasionally surrounded the Commentator and the Insurgent. In 2001 the Insurgent gained national attention for publishing in the December, 2000 issue, a primer on violent methods of ending scientific testing on lab animals, opposite a page detailing the names, phone numbers, and home addresses of science professors alleged to be involved in such practices.

In 2005, members of the Student Insurgent Collective led efforts to defund the Commentator on the grounds that it had violated its own Mission and Goals statement by ridiculing a prominent student senator. The ASUO's Programs Finance Committee (PFC) voted to defund the Commentator. Later, three members of the PFC resigned their positions under duress, including one whose criminal record was published in the Commentator. The free-speech advocacy and civil rights organization FIRE threatened legal action against the University, and the Commentator's funding was subsequently reinstated by a reconstituted PFC.

In 2006 the Commentator republished the twelve Mohammed cartoons that had sparked riots across the Middle East after first appearing in the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten several months prior. The Insurgent followed by publishing twelve cartoons depicting Jesus, some of which featured the deity with a prominent erection. Several groups demanded a public apology or a defunding of the Student Insurgent, and news outlets including The O'Reilly Factor called for the firing of the University's President David B. Frohnmayer. Both the Emerald and the Commentator publicly defended the Insurgent's right to free speech and Frohnmayer's decision to uphold it, citing the 2001 Southworth decision by the Supreme Court.

The Emerald itself is not a stranger to controversy. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the student newspaper published an annual satire supplement called the Immorald. The 1981 Immorald featured the phrase "Give me a fucking break" in nearly all its stories, which led to an angry editorial in the Eugene Register-Guard, entitled "The Immorald is Not Funny". The phrase had been used earlier that year by Emerald political columnist (and former editor) Greg Wasson, which prompted Max Rijken, a member of the Oregon Legislature, to photocopy the article for fellow legislators and demand that the UO administration take action against the newspaper. The co-editor of that year's Immorald, Mike Rust, went on to co-found the Commentator a few years later.

The other 1981 Immorald co-editor, Mike Lee, had lightly sparred with the Emerald itself a few years earlier, in a mock controversy that had real consequences for the UO mascot, the Oregon Duck. In 1978, the Emerald sponsored a student referendum that would officially declare the cartoon character Mallard Drake as UO mascot. Drake, the creation of Emerald editorial cartoonist Steve Sandstrom, was a black-feathered duck, closer in spirit to Daffy Duck than the UO's Donald. Lee opposed the referendum through an organization called the "Retain Class in Your Bird" committee, itself a parody of a campus radical group, the Revolutionary Community Youth Brigade. Students ultimately voted for Donald over Mallard, in an election that drew more votes than the student-body president on the same ballot. UO officials later used that election as evidence that students "officially" voted for Donald Duck as campus mascot.