It seems like a world ago, but Tritons wrote in after our Winter 2020 “Epic” issue:
Dear Triton Magazine:
Your article about Judy Sweet (“Sweet Victory: How Judy Sweet Changed the Game in Collegiate Athletics”) had some inaccuracies.
The opening paragraph uses the passive to explain Sweet’s ascendancy: “In 1974, UC San Diego made a nontraditional choice in selecting Judy Sweet as its athletic director.”
UC San Diego higher administration perhaps approved this selection, but it was my father, Dr. Howard F. Hunt, then Chair of Physical Education, who appointed her. It was an innovative and surprising choice at the time, and he received criticism for it. But he stood by his decision that she was the right person for the job. It was so unusual that The Chronicle of Higher Education did an interview with my father and with Sweet, and put her photograph on the front page. He was the first university physical education chairperson to appoint a female director of athletics in the country.
And in the second paragraph: “Sweet promptly set about using the new law (Title IX) to chart an ambitious course for our athletics programs—which at the time had large disparities in resources.” She did not do this by herself. My father, who was still chair, had already set many of these policies in place, and together they worked—along with other excellent professors and instructors in the department—to right these disparities. My father’s overarching goal was to make UCSD physical education and sports programs consistent with his view: that members of the UCSD community should be participants, rather than spectators, and that fitness and well-being should be available to all students, faculty and staff. To this end, innovation in class offerings and an abundance of intermural opportunities were deemed crucial.
I hope you publish this letter. Many of the hundreds of UCSD staff, faculty and students my father helped (to quit smoking, to find a daily fitness regime that was sustainable, to eat in moderation with thoughtful consideration, and to think positively) have perhaps left UCSD. But I am sure they have not forgotten him.
I would love it if some of these UCSD graduates, and former staff and faculty might write a sentence or two to Triton expressing memories of my father, and his contribution to their approach to fitness and exercise. He was a native Californian, a graduate of UCLA, and he truly embodied the resourceful spirit of California and of UCSD.
—Robyn Hunt ’78, MFA
Carolina Distinguished Professor, University of South Carolina
Dear Triton Magazine:
I’m a GPS alum from 2000, and reviewing my print copy of the Winter 2020 magazine this evening, I just had to send you a quick word of congratulations and thanks for this excellent publication. I am an alum of several schools, some very prestigious, but your magazine surpasses anything I receive from them or have seen from other schools. With all the personal and professional stories—the wide breadth of which is impressive alone—you manage to inform, teach, and inspire with each well-written article. It makes an alum like me really proud to belong to UCSD! What a wonderful team you must have.
So, thank you once again for your fine work and dedication to making each edition better than the last. I wonder what the next edition will hold.
—Abe Lee, MPIA ’00
BRUSHES WITH GREATNESS
When I was a Revelle freshman, Linus Pauling lectured on orbital theory in Jon Singer’s first-year chemistry. I followed Pauling out of the lecture hall into Revelle Plaza to ask a question. He said we should sit down to talk, so we did, and 10 minutes later when I looked up, we were surrounded by students listening as well. It was a wondrous time.
—Steven Tracy ’72
In 2004, I briefly did crunches next to my hero Kobe Bryant (RIP) at RIMAC. The whole gym, and time, stood still!
—Jeff Wilson ’07