To the Student Body,

My name is Chelsea Welch and I am the General Manager of SRTV. In responseto the concerns regarding the pornography shown on SRTV a couple weeks ago, I am writing this to you to better explain the role SRTV plays with students and student organizations. I hope this will clarify some issues regarding what happened and put people at ease.

SRTV is a service of the A.S. This means we open our doors to everyone on campus. If a student or student organization comes to us and asks for our help in having a commercial for an event they are doing or to have us film an event, we are happy to oblige. We have never turned away a student and we never will. It's not our role to decide who we work with. SRTV, in the past, has helped MASA with its Fusion event, Surf and Board Club with coverage of their on campus events and many other orgs as well. While we were hesitant to welcome the Koala when they approached us last quarter about having their own show, SRTV could not discriminate them for their past behavior. How could we say we welcome any student or org to use us if they wanted and then to tell the Koala, "No, you can't?"

Another thing I wanted to talk about is my role as SRTV manager. Many of you think I should be held responsible for the porn shown during the Koala's show. My role as manager is to make sure the station keeps running. When it comes to students' shows, I have to stay content neutral. Being the manager, I cannot tell a student they can't have a show because I think it's boring, controversial, in bad taste, downright offending or I think it goes against my personal lifestyle. It is not my role to decide content. It is your role as a student. It is your decision. SRTV is student run. Students pay for it. Students decide what they want to see. That means, and please understand this, that if enough students did not want to see Steve York's next film that he plans to bring out in March - and they voiced this to SRTV - it will not be shown. However, if enough students told SRTV they did want to see it, SRTV will show it. We broadcast what you as a student tell us to broadcast. It is truly up to you. I want to encourage everyone who has an opinion either way to come to an SRTV meeting Wednesday at 9pm in our studio in the Old Student Center (it's directly above the Bike Shop) to tell us, and if you can not make our meetings, I offer you my email at cawelch@ucsd.edu so you can let me know what you think, answer any questions you may have, and note any concerns you have. I do thank those of you who have already sent me comments and I welcome those of you who want to talk to me about it.

I want to end this letter by informing you of what you can do if you are still concerned about flipping through channels and coming across something indecent. SRTV will only air indecent material between 10pm and 6am as a courtesy to students. Also, you have the option to automatically skip over SRTV when channel surfing by programming your channels with your remote. Though some of you are mad and offended by SRTV for the porn, SRTV can not apologize for what it's done, because it hasn't done anything wrong. The views expressed during Steve's show are entirely that of the Koala and not of SRTV. SRTV acts as a means of communication through television for anyone who comes to us, and we will not close our doors to anyone. For example, if you wanted to come on TV and talk to students about something please come in. I encourage you. Unfortunately sometimes people only focus on negative events and many have forgotten what SRTV has done in the past for a budding film student or for an organization who is trying to get the word out about an event there are putting on campus and I think people need to look at the whole picture. SRTV is content blind. Students dictate what gets aired and what does not. Not just members of SRTV; ALL students at UCSD. We all do pay for it and therefore we should decide what goes on.

I hope this helps many of you understand what is really going on. If you have any further concerns, let me know and please let others know they can contact me about this and I will listen to them.