San Diego City College students using the acronym FAGS for the Fellowship of Associated Gay Students have created a stir on campus, sparring with administrators and drawing criticism from some in the local community.

“[The name] has a sense of humor to it and starts a dialogue,” said FAGS president Jason Frye. “One of the motivations of the name was to neutralize an epithet.”

According to administrators, however, staff and faculty have raised questions and concerns regarding the group’s name.

“It was almost immediate, that when the first banner we knew about was posted, we started getting complaints from staff and faculty,” said Vice President of Student Services Peter White.

Tension escalated over the use of the acronym FAGS, which is commonly-used as a homophobic slur, when administration removed posters with the group’s name. Frye cried foul, saying the administration had violated the group’s free speech rights.

Dean of Student Affairs Denise Whisenhunt notified the group she removed a poster because it did not meet guidelines required for posting – not because of its content.

Whisenhunt said the poster was removed because it was posted in an undesignated area.

“In fact, not all the posters of the organization were taken down,” Whisenhunt said. “There were three posters that day and one didn’t meet the posting guidelines; the other two were up.”

Frye said Whisenhunt later acknowledged the poster was removed, in part, because it offended staff and faculty members.

This provoked the administration to consult the campus’ site compliance officer, which, White said, is due process when “staff or faculty members come forward to complain about what they consider to be harassing, threatening or any other type of offensive language.”

The back-and-forth between City College and the college group, which also operates on the San Diego Mesa College campus, has also sparked dialogue in the local GLBT community regarding the use of the acronym.

Frye likened its use to the use of the words “black” and “queer,” which, respectively, were slurs used against African-Americans in the 1960s, and gay lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in the 1980s.

A feature story published by the Gay & Lesbian Times in October 2007 defined a process called amelioration, the process of reclaiming words once used in derogatory fashions – which is what FAGS intends to do.

“By embracing a word that was used to attack or degrade, the gay community has demagnetized the strength of the word, making it a common everyday term,” said Ramone Johnson, a GLBT-rights activist who writes for About.com, in an interview with the Gay & Lesbian Times last year. “This lessens the effect of the word when used against them.”

Not everyone is on board, though.

Ben Cartwright, coordinator of the Pride Resource Office at San Diego State University, said the community is “still working out the kinks” with using the word “queer,” which has become less frequently used as a slur and more frequently used by members of the GLBT community.

White said the word “FAGS” may not be appropriate to use.

“Let’s face it – ‘FAGS’ is not a universally accepted term,” he said. “It may be in five or 10 years. I’ve seen a lot of [words used] … that never would’ve passed my lips [in the 1960s], but now are common currency in conversation.”

Others in the community have noted the lack of lesbian visibility in the name Fellowship of Associated Gay Students.

“We disagree with the division between lesbian and gay,” Frye said. “We are gay men and gay women.”

Others disagree, and say a generation gap may be responsible for the attitude.

“The younger generation did not go through the visibility struggle,” Cartwright said.

The group was called the Alternative Lifestyle Legion (ALL) last spring and the LGBT Student Union before the membership voted unanimously to rename it FAGS. The group is now changing its name to FAGS and Allies – another hurdle for the club. After similar conversations with administration at Mesa, FAGS and Allies has been approved by President Rita Cepeda.

Frye said he received approval for the name change from the then-City College Interim Vice President of Student Services Gerald Ramsey, and the club was in the process of changing its name when the Spring 2008 semester ended.

White, however, disputes the claim.

“The current president of the club says the name change was reviewed and approved by the person sitting in my seat last year; that individual [Ramsey] tells me that was not the case,” White said.

Frye also accused the administration of “cherry-picking” when it deemed the club’s advisor ineligible due to his part-time status as a professor.

White said several clubs have the same problem, and FAGS isn’t being targeted.

“The district is very interested in adhering to a rule of thumb that full-time faculty be club advisors, not part-timers,” he said.