By snoadmin
It was a reunion of the Union Thursday night at the Soroptimist House.
In recognition of the Union Weekly‘s 30th anniversary, dozens of supporters, Union alumni and current staffers swapped stories and gave speeches over cake, hors d’oeuvres, coffee and bottled beer. Issues throughout the years were also on display.
Featured guests and speakers included Jack Shinar, the Union‘s first editor-in-chief in 1977-78, Debbie Arrington, the second editor-in-chief in 1978-79, and Cal State Long Beach President F. King Alexander.
The publication was also presented with a certificate of recognition from California State Senator Jenny Oropeza of the 28th District.
Alexander stressed in his speech that, while he hears the criticism of those who have become offended from content published in the Union Weekly, he still understands the value of First Amendment freedoms and said he believes the Union is a tool that is “wiping out the old stigmas” of the university.
“I think that what [the Union Weekly] has created over the past 30 years is more than something to be proud of,” Alexander said. “You’ve created friendships, you’ve created community and that’s what we want to do at this university.”
King also said he relieved the editors of the Union, which features a satirical section called the Grunion, upon mentioning to them that while he was a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he was friends with the founders of The Onion, the award-winning internationally distributed parody newspaper.
“When we started [the Union] 30 years ago, we weren’t thinking about if it’s something that is going to be here decades from now as a Long Beach State institution,” Arrington said. “We were thinking about, ‘How are we going to get out the next issue?’ It was always week to week to week.”
Arrington, now a writer at the Sacramento Bee, said she felt the Union was “even more important than a Pulitzer.”
“In forming this paper, it really set up a stable environment that could be creative, that could have a life of its own,” Arrington said. “It could have an ever-changing group of people producing it and contributing to it and making every Union their own.”
The 30-year history of the Union Weekly, however, has, at times, been peppered with as much controversies as it has successes.
As current Editor-in-Chief Brian Dunning, a senior English creative writing major, claimed: “There is no other college newspaper in the nation that has had as colorful or as checkered a past…”
Checkered in the Union Weekly‘s colorful past is the following: numerous attempts to have it shut down and its funding cut, an 88-page issue in 1988 that nearly bankrupted the publication (and whose editors consequently skipped town), dissenters in the ranks who left the Union to briefly publish the Anti-Union, thousands of Union Weekly issues being stolen off stands, campuswide confusion with Union Weekly parodies of the Daily Forty-Niner and harsh criticism toward Union or Grunion content.
But when the Union Weekly deals with being called “juvenile,” “stupid” or “irresponsible,” Dunning said the response sometimes is a simple one.
“We print poop jokes on the back page,” he said.
Dunning added that his publication cannot please everyone, and that arguing with the completely student-run venture is comparable to simply arguing with other students.
“When people are out calling for our heads, we just try to remind people that, deep down, we’re just kids who like to write poop jokes and be funny. We have a lot of people who are just really interested in writing comedy, and [the Union] is an outlet for them to do that.”
Richard Haller, ASI executive director, said, “I don’t always agree with what the Union does. I don’t always agree with what the Grunion does. But I will defend [their] right to do it.”
