The controversial 4.20 protest club is at odds with OUSA once again, this time over the accused censorship of one of its entries in the upcoming Otago University Student Film Competition, the Mothras.
OtagoNorml, an associate group of the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, submitted three entries into the competition this year, one of which is up for an award, but it’s their promotional video explaining their association with OUSA that has ruffled a few feathers.
OUSA General Manager Stephen Alexander has pulled the short video from the competition because of an issue regarding one scene, which he says OtagoNorml spokesman Abe Gray refused to edit out of the final entry.
Alexander, however, denies this is an act of censorship.
“There is one item that I have excluded from the screening/judging process because of Mr. Gray’s failure to follow through on his promise to edit a certain individual, who objected to being filmed, out of the film clip. There is no attempt to censor any messages, simply a lack of good faith on Mr. Gray’s part.”
The controversial scene shows OUSA President Harriet Geoghegan being enveloped in a cloud of marijuana smoke being exhaled by a video participant.
Gray says he was never officially requested to remove the scene from the movie, and the objection he received from Alexander, when the film was first posted on Youtube in March of this year, regarded how the movie “made a mockery of OUSA.”
Now he says OUSA is shutting him out, refusing to discuss the matter or let OtagoNorml amend their entry.
“I’ve tried to talk to Stephen Alexander further about this matter, but he refuses to get back to me.”
Gray feels that the entry is being banned because it clearly elucidates OUSA’s endorsement of cannabis use as a form of protest.
“Cannabis is controversial … we see what we’re doing as totally sanctioned by the students, we are an OUSA club, we pay our memberships and levies. Stephen Alexander doesn’t have the right to tell us what to do.”
The Mothra entries are being screened between 5-8 October.
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