Editorial: Please, Mr. President

An open letter to Dr. Donald R. Gerth, President, California State University, Sacramento:

President Gerth, we at the State Hornet are puzzled. Last week you, along with Robert Jones, the vice president for University Affairs, made the long trip across the Atlantic to attend a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization conference on higher education in Paris, the city of lights.

You were there as a member of the conference steering committee and as president of the International Association of University Presidents. Jones accompanied you in his capacity as treasurer of IAUP.

This was a great mark of respect for our campus. This reflects well not only upon you and Jones, but indirectly upon this campus and those who work and study here.

But, if not for a cooperative member of the administration, the trip would have gone unnoticed. This is not the way it should work. A university should be trumpeting the accomplishments of all the members of the campus community instead of covering them with a shroud of secrecy that would do the CIA and the KGB proud.

Mr. President, one of the duties of a newspaper, besides reporting on the troubles that may befall its readers, is to let them know about the positive occurrences in the lives of those who serve this university. Your trip to Paris was a story that should have been plastered across the front page of the State Hornet. Instead, we had to find a space that provided the merest of details to our readers.

We are not asking to be privy to state secrets -- not that we would mind if we were -- but simply to tell the campus community what our president is doing. We don't think it is too much to ask.