A Trump supporter holds up a copy of The Sun he defaced. Photo by William Bird.
Copies of The Southwestern College Sun newspaper and El Sol Magazine have been defaced with racist messages and calls to vote for Donald Trump. Chula Vista Police and the SWCPD investigated, but neither agency or the college plan to press charges. Interim President Robert Deegan condemned the action and said the college would monitor the situation.
An issue of The Sun was defaced in October when a man wrote “Fuck Blacks” across the front page photograph of an African-American man demonstrating in El Cajon following the controversial shooting of an unarmed African immigrant. In June several issues of The Sun were vandalized when someone wrote “Trump 2016” across the face of ASO President Mona Dibas, a Muslim woman photographed in a hijab headscarf.
In July nearly $3,000 worth of copies of El Sol Magazine with Dibas on the cover were vandalized or stolen from a Sun/ El Sol distribution rack at 7/11 and other businesses across Otay Lakes Road from the college.
Sun staff photographer William Bird said he was walking into the 7/11 across from the college early one morning when he saw a group of construction workers.
“One of them had our newspaper in his hand so I thought, Oh that’s nice, he’s probably going to read it at lunch or something,” Bird said. “When I walked out, I glanced over at the newsstand and on the top I saw someone had defaced one of our (newspapers) and it said ‘fuck blacks.’ So I turned back around and I see the guy who had the newspaper. He doesn’t have the newspaper in his hand anymore, but he had a black marker.”
Bird said he grabbed his camera phone and took a picture of the copy on the newsstand just as the man had left it. Then he approached the man who was with five or six other workers.
“I grabbed (the newspaper) and took it over to them,” he said. “I said ‘Hey did you do this?’ He said ‘yeah’ in a very sure-of-himself way.”
Bird said the man agreed to be photographed holding the defaced newspaper and told him why he had written the message.
“He said, ‘Blacks need to take responsibility for their actions,’” said Bird. “He gave me back the paper and just continued on a lot of ‘vote Trump’ (rhetoric) and when he started saying ‘vote Trump’ I definitely believed he was playing around. I thought he was joking because it was so farfetched.”
SWCPD Chief Michael Cash said there was no crime, but Deegan sent a campus-wide email condemning the vandalism.
“This action was bold and disturbing and one that we condemn,” wrote Deegan. “This behavior has no place here and reminds us that we all must continue to remain vigilant against any form of hate speech.”
Deegan also visited the Campus Newspaper Production class to assure students that he supported student publications and would direct campus police to be vigilant against attacks on publications and minority students.
Dibas said when she first heard of the incident over the summer it did not affect her because she had been dealing with anti-Muslim sentiment her entire life and she did not anticipate a Trump presidency. Instead, she said she wanted to focus on educating people who shared that sentiment.
“As someone who has grown up with things like this, it doesn’t bother me anymore,” she said. “At that time Trump wasn’t the president-(elect). It was like a joke. I was like, congratulations, you scribbled on my face. That doesn’t affect me anyway. You did it on a piece of paper. You were too much of a coward to come say something to my face, (but) you have to ruin a newspaper that had other important issues on it.”
Dibas said Trump’s election raises new fears for her and her loved ones that she can no longer ignore. She said some of her Muslim friends avoid student leadership positions “out of fear” that Trump’s election, following two years of a campaign marked by racist and demeaning rhetoric, will encourage racists in the U.S. to act out.
“(He) is now the ruler of our country,” she said. “Everything that he believes in (becomes) okay (to his supporters). Because if our president, why can’t they? Why can’t they grab somebody by the pussy, degrade women, call Latinos rapists, call Muslims terrorists?”
Dibas said education is the path away from hateful behavior.
“People who are ignorant, it’s very hard to change them and influence them,” she said. “I will never stop trying. I will always try to educate people but when it’s such a root core for people to be ignorant and arrogant at the same time, it becomes harder to educate them. But it’s not impossible.”
Bird’s photograph of the man who vandalized The Sun helped law enforcement determine where and for whom he worked. Deegan told journalism students the man was not a college employee or an employee of any of the construction subcontractors currently working on the Chula Vista campus. Deegan said if he had discovered that the man worked on campus, he would have had him dismissed.
Cash said the defacing was regrettable, but that no crime was committed.
“It was later determined that no crime had occurred and the issue was more a First Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression,” said Cash. “The original copy is in police custody. The newspaper will remain with College Police to utilize if any other similar incidents occur to use as a comparison of any similar incidents.”
Copies of El Sol were pulled from distribution points during much of the summer to prevent further thefts and vandalism. Dozens of copies had the cover with Dibas’ photo torn off. El Sol has been successfully circulated on and off campus this fall.
In October El Sol was named America’s best-two-year college magazine by the College Media Association at its annual convention in Atlanta. El Sol also won an international Best of Show Award at the Associated Collegiate Press National Media Convention in Washington D.C. and a General Excellence award from the Journalism Association of Community Colleges at its conference in Cerritos. El Sol also earned an award for the cover photo of Dibas holding an American flag.
