As an ISU alum, I check in with the Daily a couple times a week just to see what’s happening back on campus. As a sports fan and major Cyclone supporter, I always take a look at the sports section to get the latest. So, today, I checked in again and saw the headline of an article by Charles Calek about the Cyclone’s loss to UCLA last Thursday. Naturally I clicked on the headline. What did I find? The most useless bit of drivel I’ve ever seen.

I don’t care if you want to publish articles of this sort, ones that are more free association than the sharing of information; but to do so with the insensitivity and the crassness of a Larry Flynt wannabe on a bender is unprofessional and downright offensive. Mr. Calek’s diatribe about the UCLA cheerleaders and their particular physical qualities had no place in this article. If he wanted to simply refer to their attractiveness as a possible distraction, he would have been fine. But the crass and incessant references to their breasts went too far.

To read that Mr. Calek is the sports editor for the Daily is even more appalling. As an editor for a division of Simon & Schuster, I’m ashamed to think that Iowa State is producing this type of journalist and this type of journalism.

As a senior editor, each day I have a manuscript that crosses my desk that I have to critique for style, appropriateness, content and above all, sensitivity. Some of this manuscript comes from authors, some of it comes from junior editors. Had Mr. Calek’s manuscript come across my desk it would have been returned with the suggestion to be more sensitive.

Mr. Calek works for a student paper, representing a state university, financially supported by state and federal taxes and alumni support. No, this is not an argument for censorship.

Freedom of the press and freedom of speech must be supported and maintained at all costs. But the use of this publicly supported forum for the purpose of making sexually derogatory statements about a group of individuals is an abuse of that right.

Before Mr. Calek embarks upon the publishing profession (if indeed that is his intention), I recommend he take some sensitivity workshops or else find a new profession.

Unless he cleans up his act, his work will never make it across my desk and into publication. Mr. Calek was wrong. Based on the insensitivity of his article, he is a dog first and a questionable journalist.

Mary Kriener

ISU alum, ’87