Thursday, October 10, 2002

Student Group's Web Site May Keep Its Link to Suspected Terrorist Organizations By DAN CARNEVALE The University of California at San Diego has withdrawn demands that a student group, the Ché Café Collective, remove from its Web page Internet links to the sites of suspected terrorist organizations. But the university still wants the student group to stop hosting a Web page, called BURN, that is within the "ucsd.edu" Internet domain and that supports one of the suspected terrorist organizations. Ché Café, a left-leaning student group, has not indicated whether it will comply. Last month, the university sent a letter ordering the group to remove from its Web site an Internet link to the site of a Colombian rebel organization called the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC. The rebel group is listed by the U.S. State Department as an international terrorist organization. (See an article from The Chronicle, September 27.) The university was concerned that allowing the student group to maintain the link would violate the USA Patriot Act, which forbids providing "material support or resources" to a "foreign terrorist organization." Under the act, material support is defined as currency, lodging, training, or communications equipment, among other things. Ché Café responded that it was not providing "material support or resources," but merely offering an Internet link so that others could learn about the Colombian organization, a service that the student group maintains should be considered free speech. The American Association of University Professors, the American Civil Liberties Union, and other organizations sent a letter on Tuesday to the university supporting the student group. "Americans have a right to inform themselves about any group, no matter how abhorrent its positions," the letter states. "Acts in furtherance of terrorism are prohibited; speech about it is not." Joseph W. Watson, the university's vice chancellor for student affairs, said the university agreed with the students that they had a right to maintain the Internet link. "Linking, obviously, is protected as free speech under the First Amendment," he said. "We went too far in mentioning linking." But the university asked that Ché Café not use the "ucsd.edu" domain name when linking to the site of another suspected terrorist organization, the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, a Marxist-Leninist group trying to establish an independent state in southeastern Turkey. So far, the student group has not taken down the BURN page. None of Ché Café's members could be reached on Wednesday for comment. Maintaining the site on the university's computer server isn't a violation of federal law, Mr. Watson said, but of university policy. University resources, he said, shouldn't be used to promote terrorist organizations. "What we're most concerned about is anything that implies, implicitly or explicitly, that this has anything to do with UCSD," Mr. Watson said. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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