Kris Gregorian has taken it upon himself to push the envelope at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Many believe he’s gone too far. Gregorian is the editor of a sarcastic, off-color tabloid at UCSD called The Koala that is full of offensive and explicit material. The Koala captured local and national media attention last month when Gregorian called black students “you ungrateful n-word” on student TV following protests over the “Compton Cookout” party thrown by UCSD students to mock Black History Month. Administrators condemned the publication, and the student government froze funding for all university news outlets to reconsider funding the tabloid. The student government has since reinstated funding — paid through student fees — for The Koala. The tabloid received $3,471 this quarter. No topic is too sensitive to ridicule. In the spring issue, The Koala mocks the death of Chelsea King, the San Diego teenager who disappeared in February and whose body was later discovered buried in a shallow grave. The tabloid describes itself as “the worst in collegiate journalism since 1982.” Gregorian said The Koala simply holds up a mirror to the ethos of UCSD students. “We’re the voice of the apathetic, silent majority at UCSD,” Gregorian said. “They just don’t give a [damn].” Gregorian said The Koala battles against apathy at UCSD. “There were 1,000 people who showed up at the March 4 protests [about the UC budget cuts],” Gregorian said. “There were 22,000 people sitting in their study rooms talking about … all the sort of nerdy things that has nothing to do with the real world.” Gregorian said he is in a cultural war in which his ammunition is satire and extreme inebriation. “Let’s just get UCSD to not be full of a bunch of nerds,” Gregorian said. “Can we do that? I feel like that’s a reasonable thing to do.” Raised in Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles, Gregorian is a student studying computational neuroscience. He said he was accepted into UCLA and UC Berkeley but chose to attend UCSD. Gregorian believes the outrage minority students at UCSD have shown toward the administration is indicative of the administration in general. “I feel like the disenfranchisement that minority students at UCSD feel is simply a subset of the disenfranchisement that all students at UCSD feel simply because our administration is so inept,” Gregorian said. He dismisses the critics who say the tabloid undermines free speech. “All speech will offend someone eventually,” Gregorian said. “So, great, let’s just ban all speech. People don’t want to live in a world where they have to deal with things that they don’t agree with. They simply don’t understand the wide variety of things that currently exists that they disagree with. “I can use myself as an example. I’m an atheist. I walk around my campus, and here’s a Christian guy who’s talking about the earth being created in seven days. All of my research is predicated on the notion that evolution exists and that we evolved slowly in the development of life. For this [guy] to come out and say that the earth poofed into existence in seven days is an affront — it’s an affront to everything I believe and it’s insulting.” Gregorian doesn’t believe the Christian should be muffled nor should The Koala be banned. As for using student fees to fund a tabloid that is offensive and hurtful to many students, Gregorian said it’s about the principal of the matter. “Once Associated Students — as an agent of the government — extends a limited public forum, they have no choice but to fund everyone in a viewpoint-neutral manner,” Gregorian said. “So it’s not that it’s important that they fund us. It’s that — principally speaking — they must fund everyone equally.” Gregorian laughs at all the media attention he’s received in the past few months. Gregorian jokes he’s become like a wizard from the effect he has on people. “It’s truly ironic that I have the ability to muster that kind of power,” Gregorian said.