by Dan Flynn

The offices of a conservative student publication at the University of California-Berkeley were burglarized on February 25. Thousands of magazines featuring an article critical of a campus Hispanic group were stolen.

Robb McFadden, the president of the Berkeley College Republicans and a Patriot distributor, told Campus Report: "We went on Tuesday morning to our offices to distribute The Patriot. When we got to the office, they were all gone. There were thirty stacks of 100 papers. The press run cost $1600."

The lead article in the confiscated issue labeled the national student group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Atzlan (MEChA) one of Berkeley's most prominent "government funded hate groups." While distributing the first half of the publication's print run on Monday, February 25, California Patriot staff members charge that members of MEChA began following them and jeering them with anti-white epithets. Death threats against the editors soon followed. A few hours later, the Patriot's office was broken into and the thousands of remaining newspapers were stolen. The theft was discovered the next day. The theives are believed to have gained entry to office via ceiling panels.

Campus Report's queries to a MEChA leader at Berkeley did not elicit a response.

Juan-Carlos Leal Solis, the author of the controversial piece, writes that MEChA's "ideology is not unlike the White Nationalist or neo-Nazi movements: reclaim a piece of the United States for 'our' race and exterminate anyone who neither bleeds the blood nor thinks the thoughts we do." The group calls for Mexicans to take over the American southwest, regularly employs racially derogatory language against whites in its literature, and calls for Mexican Americans to show loyalty to Mexico and not the United States. MEChA boasts campus affiliates at more than 400 colleges and universities. The group's motto is, "For our race, everything. For those outside our race, nothing." The California Patriot article questioned why MEChA, a racist organization, received such heavy subsides from schools like Berkeley.

Solis points out that MEChA's own literature indicts the group as a racial supremacist outfit. "In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal 'gringo' invasion of our territories," reads a mission statement of MEChA's, "we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlan from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny."

Despite circumstantial evidence suggesting that anger over the anti-MEChA article may have sparked the mass-theft, those involved with the publication are not rushing to judgment. "We don't have any solid suspects," McFadden notes. "There's no clear proof yet."

Leaders of the California Patriot have filed two complaints with the campus police. The first involves the break-in of their office and the theft of 3,000 copies of their newspaper. The second complaint charges the students harassing their distributors with a hate-crime for hurling anti-white slurs at them. As of yet, Berkeley campus police have yet to visit the scene of the crime.

Unlike recent incidents of censorship on campus, the February 25 thefts have generated an immediate response from Berkeley's chancellor. "Theft of publications or any interference with the access of individuals or groups to freedom of expression is unconscionable behavior," Robert Berdahl wrote in the student daily newspaper, labeling such actions "completely antithetical to the values that form the foundation of our democracy" and "particularly egregious in an educational setting." Berdahl acknowledged, "Over the past few years, there have been several instances of this behavior. These acts diminish our community. Despite heightened attention by the campus police and the Office of Student Life, we have not yet been able to identify the perpetrators. We will continue to do our utmost to identify those responsible, and we will bring criminal and student charges to bear on those individuals."

During the past few years numerous speakers have been shouted down at Berkeley, and newspaper thefts have become increasingly common. The university has up until this point refused to punish any of the students or faculty involved in denying others their right to speak freely. Despite this inaction, McFadden thinks that the University might finally respond to the rash of censorship that affects the Bay-area campus. "I've been through this before but I really see this as a wake up call for the administration," the College Republican leader maintains. "I think the chancellor is acting in good faith." If the administration fails to bring the perpetrators of the theft to justice, the conservative publication's writers are prepared to file suit themselves.

"You'd never think that this kind of thing would happen on a college campus," McFadden remarked. "Colleges are supposed to be a place where a free exchange of ideas takes place. That people would circumvent that free exchange of ideas and steal newspapers is a shock and an outrage."