In second trip to USU, attorney general finds crowd for identity theft tour

As the result of poor advertising, Attorney General Mark Shurtleff arrived to USU Sept. 30 to find no one in sight. He returned to campus Thursday to convey his message concerning identity theft and there was an audience this time around.Shurtleff said his assistant, Scott Troxel, “took a pretty big beating” for the lack of publicity USU received on his arrival to campus Sept. 30.”If we get two more people here we will have increased attendance by 200 percent,” Shurtleff said while speaking to a group students in the Taggart Student Center’s International Lounge.Though there wasn’t a significant turn out, Shurtleff said the important thing is that all who attended relay his message about identity theft to others. Shurtleff will run for Utah’s Senator in the 2010 election. In his political career he has worked on the prosecution of drug dealers and eliminating labs for methamphetamine.Because an audience was almost nonexistent during Shurtleff’s first appearance, Preston Parker, public relations professor, decided to assist in advertising Shurtleff’s second visit to campus. He did this by organizing press releases and planning the time and place of the attorney general’s next visit. The public relations department was initially unaware Shurtleff had a plan to speak on campus and stated it did not receive a press release.The public relations department was not the only group uninformed. Renae Cowley, junior in agricultural communication and student of Parker, said Parker looked into the reason for the unknown speech and explained the reasons why the event had no attendance. She said she learned The Herald Journal did not have news of Shurtleff’s arrival because it received the e-mail after the event occurred. The title of the press release was “Time to Shred,” and many people who received the e-mail deleted it, believing it was junk mail, Cowley said. She also said the organization of the press release did not say the time, date and location of Shurtleff’s scheduled visit to USU until the last paragraph.

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