ARCATA -- Two sexually explicit stories in campus newspaper The Lumberjack have outraged some advertisers and led to complaints to top Humboldt State University administrators.

Stories in the April 14 and April 21 editions covered sexual activities.

This week's Lumberjack included a letter to the editor by Nancy Tobin, owner of the Arcata clothing store Vintage Avenger, criticizing the explicit nature of the stories and announcing she was pulling her advertisements from the paper. Lumberjack editor Matt Mais said another advertiser followed suit.

Tobin did not return a Times-Standard message seeking comment by deadline.

HSU junior Cat Sieh, who wrote the first story, said she tried to write it as a news story about a seminar for women on fellatio. She said the editors suggested the topic at a meeting and she volunteered to write it when other reporters didn't seem interested. Sieh is also a Times-Standard intern.

Mais, a senior, said he saw the assignment as just another story at the time, and didn't expect this reaction.

"This shouldn't be a big deal," he said. "These are things that people do, every day."

Sieh said the goal was not just to discuss how to perform fellatio but to report on the fact that such classes take place in the community and women are interested in them. Her story reported that 14 women, young and middle-aged, attended the seminar.

After the story appeared, Sieh said she heard from people interested in attending the seminar but received few complaints -- with one exception being that she should have discussed safe sex.

"That is a mistake and I acknowledge that," she said. "Other than that I stand behind that article."

But she said she was upset that her story was linked with the second story, which discussed cunnilingus. She said it was more crude and wasn't tied to an event as hers was.

"People were absolutely outraged at the second -- and good for them, because it was not appropriate," she said.

Senior Karen Wilkinson, editor of the Lumberjack's features section and co-writer of the second story, said she saw it as a logical follow-up to Sieh's piece to give equal time to men's and women's sexuality.

Wilkinson said she's heard positive reactions as well as negative ones, although the response to the second story was harsher than the response to the first.

Mais said he's heard positive feedback as well.

"My mom read the article and showed it to one of her friends," Mais said. "Her friend took it home to her husband."

Melinda Myers, a lecturer in HSU's Psychology Department who writes an unrelated weekly column on sexuality for the Lumberjack, said that in more than two years she's received just two negative comments.

Discussion of sexuality is crucial for health reasons, Myers said, since college students know less about it than many adults may think. This semester, she said, one junior asked if drinking Windex -- which is poisonous -- would prevent a woman from conceiving.

Other students have said they're bewildered that they have herpes despite having been tested for sexually transmitted diseases. Since herpes flares up and then becomes dormant, Myers said, it usually isn't detected by tests.

She said she frequently gets questions from students who just want to know if their own sexual feelings are "normal."

The second Lumberjack story in particular detracts from this type of frank discussion because it was written to shock rather than to educate, she said. She said the first, as a report on a seminar, was less so.

Mais said a few readers have complained to President Rollin Richmond and Provost Rick Vrem, who made a statement saying they understand the concerns but will not censor the college paper.

Journalism Professor Mark Larson, adviser to the Lumberjack, said the paper gives students an opportunity "to succeed and fail on their own in a real-world kind of setting."

He does not interfere with students' First Amendment rights, he said, but does critique the paper post-publication, as do other journalists. Larson said his criticism of these stories focused on what he saw as relatively weak reporting rather than on taste.

But he said what content should appear in general circulation newspapers is "the debate that real-world newspapers face every day. Whether it's content that's political, content that could be distasteful because of violence, because of religious issues, because of moral issues -- every day newspapers struggle with that."

He said the news judgment decisions for these stories are among hundreds of decisions made by the editors over the last year, many of them excellent. Larson said community feedback helps students become better journalists.

"In this case and in every case, I invite readers to call and write their feedback to the student journalists," he said.

The Lumberjack's last issue of the semester will come out on Wednesday.