MISSION VIEJO : College Nixes Outdoor Workshop on AIDS

A Saddleback College student leader who has proposed an outdoor AIDS awareness workshop with mock demonstrations on how to “eroticize” condom use has been ordered by administrators to hold the event in a less public place.

Mark Gittner, 18, said the restriction violates his right to free speech. He is asking the administration to consider a compromise permitting the student government-sponsored workshop in the campus quad using a tent or other buffer to shield it from passing students.

“Every student who is exposed to the workshop is potentially a life saved,” said Gittner, who is an Associated Student Government clubs commissioner and president of the college’s student Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Assn.

The college’s Associated Student Government is sponsoring the AIDS awareness workshop, set for April 26, but administrators say the sexually explicit event might be offensive in such a public setting.

Vern Hodge, vice president of student services at the college, said Tuesday: “This is a topic that is extremely important in terms of educating young people, and it’s one that I would hope all young people would take advantage of. But if the issue is to educate, you don’t force-feed people.”

The workshop’s emphasis on what Gittner called “eroticism” is meant to encourage “smart sex” with condoms and other measures to decrease chances of contracting AIDS.

“It is very clinical,” Gittner said of the workshop. “It is a very frank and open discussion on sex.”

Permission to hold the outdoor workshop was denied by Hodge earlier this month.

On Monday, Gittner and other students told the college district’s board of trustees that more than 200 student signatures had been collected in support of the outdoor workshop.

But Hodge said, “While we want to see outstanding programs in regards to AIDS education, there is an appropriate place. It’s still up to us as to where is best to hold those programs.”