UCSD Co-Op Dispute

Regarding the “UCSD Co-Op Dispute” (March 10), we predict with the utmost confidence that the UC San Diego administration will have its way over the control of keys to the “student-owned” facilities. There is widespread knowledge of this issue within the student body, but your reporter has missed the most salient facts. To provide for public safety, the administration needs only to be issued keys. But their aim is to be the key masters, with total knowledge of and control over all key holders.

Student Jason Carbone downplays the issue as “symbolic.”

But the first rule of politics is “divide and conquer,” which management effects by moving along five-year plans, thereby overwhelming any resistance from student leaders whose active tenure is usually three years or less. Administrators are paranoid because they are not accustomed to a participatory democracy. Any dynamic voice in opposition to their plans is seen only as a threat to their personal authority.

The real “symbolism” of this issue is the fact that the administration has total control over student lives on campus. Despite Jim Carruther’s definition of the Student Center as “no different than any other University facility,” co-op leaders are attempting to draw a line around these buildings, which were built and are maintained by self-imposed student fees. The co-ops’ very nonprofit orientation sets them at odds with the “establishment” view of acceptable forms of organization. Co-op member Tony Smith states “the Administration is setting a precedent of ignoring student input,” but you see, this is the way it has always been at UCSD. Fifteen years ago, the university resisted the creation of the Bike Co-op because of threats from vocal La Jolla merchants who said they would sue over the illegal use of public property. That changed, but only after the chancellor succeeded in replacing the central Student Co-operative Union with the Associated Student form of government, leaving the co-op retail shops that came later to deal directly with the administration-controlled Student Center Board. They don’t have these problems at UCLA, where the student body hires and fires its own facility managers.

It seems that UC managers have not evolved beyond the cold war mentality that their generation has used to rationalize a top-down style of administration applied to everything from foreign policy disputes to protests at secondary schools, like Gompers Junior High.

RALPH HAWKINS

JAIME BURROLA

San Diego