Re: Oct. 11 “Appearance does not dictacte sexuality”

Dear Editor,

As a student of Temple, I appreciate the representation The Temple News provides for our campus community and I respect its function of informing students on current issues and opinions in an educated manner. I say all of this to legitimize my concern as I read the article “Appearance does not dictate sexuality.” I was quite surprised to find such an article in The Temple News. I would have expected to find this type of article in a Selena Gomez-plastered tabloid. Do the explicit details of a gay man’s club-hopping escapade in Paris really deem the importance for a half-page of a 20-page newspaper? Would you run an article detailing the experiences of a club-hopping, drunk, heterosexual male? Do you feel that students need to be aware of a drunk man’s thought process as he traipses around a bar, picking out his next “target?” Do you feel that the generalization of the “typical American fashion” being “lazy” should be encouraged? As representatives of an educated university community, I certainly hope that your answer is “no.”

There are too many important things happening these days, changing our world and the world of the next generation, for us to be reading about a drunk man “playing I-Spy for that one gay” or for that one straight. There are too many sources of poorly-written, trivial documentations of people’s personal lives for The Temple News to dive into this cesspool of mediocrity. It’s easy to write poorly and employ the “shock factor.” It’s difficult to write well and change people’s lives. If someone wants to read about such triviality, I would appreciate having to recommend them to the nearest Wal-Mart checkout lane, not my student newspaper.

Sincerely,

Jared Salyards

Class of 2014