Surgeon General Story

Your Jan. 14 article (“Few SDSU Students Show Up for Koop’s AIDS, Safe Sex Talk”) covering the visit of U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop to San Diego was unprofessional, uneducated, and I would think, embarrassing for you.

First, the writer mentions that the fact that San Diego State University students are on semester break “could explain” why students were not in attendance at the lecture. The fact that we are on break is most precisely why students were not in attendance and should be quite obvious to any enlightened mind.

Second, the visit was in no way intended for SDSU students. Koop’s visit was simply to San Diego, not to SDSU. The lecture was sponsored by the Graduate School of Public Health as a service to the community and local media. Nowhere in anybody’s mind was this a lecture intended for the campus; it was simply an astute move by the graduate school to do a service at a time when Koop happened to be in town.

(Incidentally, you reported that there were 400 people in attendance in Montezuma Hall. I know the room well, it is in our student union, and the number was much more like 1,000 than 400.)

Third, your attempt to relate anything in this event to last year’s Playboy article stating that SDSU was No. 3 as a party school was illogical and unprofessional. Playboy’s ranking of college campuses is, of course, no more than a method of getting college students to buy their magazine. SDSU’s reputation as a “party school” is nothing more than the product of the simple fact that we go to school in sunny San Diego near the beach. I was surprised that The Times would waste time relating their stories to Playboy. I can only assume that you like their form of journalism.

My own campus newspaper, the Daily Aztec, was understandably concerned about your article. It is too bad that you could not offer a better example for our over 1,700 aspiring journalists, about whom, by the way, you might want to write.

LARRY EMOND

President

Associated Students

San Diego State University