Student Kicked Out Of School Over Art Project

Jan. 2 - KGO (KGO) -- A San Francisco student is accusing the Art Institute of California of censoring his work. Simone Mitchell wrote a piece criticizing the treatment of African-Americans in the media. It was too much for the institute. The story was removed from an internal magazine.

ABC7 News got hold of an e-mail sent by the dean of Academic Affairs which says the magazine was an unprofessional work that does not represent the school well. The student and his teacher are calling it censorship.

Mitchell majored in Game Art and Design at the Art Institute of California, San Francisco.

For his final project he wanted to make a statement.

Simone Mitchell: "I wanted to write a story describing a lot of the sexism, a lot of the racism and discrimination that's in these video games and bring that out to life."

The characters are three African American kids on a killing rampage. One of them has an AK-47. It turns out the men are part of a video game played by two Caucasian kids living in the suburbs, who want to be like the characters.

Simone Mitchell: "They are copying what is cool about this culture, but they are not looking at the poverty that a lot of these hip-hop rappers and gangster-rappers are growing up in, the broken families that they are growing up in."

The assignment was given to him by his Cultural Studies teacher, Robert Ovetz, who published and distributed 500 copies throughout the school. The school quickly removed most of the copies.

Robert Ovetz, teacher: "It's a basic fundamental right, the freedom of expression, the freedom of speech. It's something that is guaranteed by our constitution."

The Art Institute of California, San Francisco is a private college. A spokesperson told ABC7 News the institute reserves the right to select artwork that is appropriate to a given circumstance and may choose not to display work that might be viewed as objectionable by some audiences.

Clinton Fein is no stranger to censorship. Last October, a printing company refused to release an Abu Ghraib-recreated image for his exhibition.

Clinton Fein, artist: "Any artist who is faced with that feels violated to the extent that their expression is being muted that their voices are being silenced."

Fein has a new show opening in San Francisco on Thursday.

Ovetz was fired. The school won't tell us why and Mitchell has transferred to another art academy.

The dean of Academic Affairs says the school tries not to censor arbitrarily but sometimes it makes sense to stop things in their tracks before students go down a road they did not intend and cannot return from.

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