Judge Orders UCSD Student Co-op Store, Its Ledgers Opened

A San Diego Superior Court judge Thursday ordered a student-run store at UC San Diego to hand over its financial records for official scrutiny, ending a tense confrontation between university administrators and students.

The students affiliated with the General Store, one of several student-run cooperatives on campus, had requested a court order to stop administrators from closing the store.

Before the judge’s decision, more than 500 students held a campus rally Thursday to display their support for the co-ops and to assail the previous day’s actions by administrators.

Early Wednesday, officials had moved in to change locks at the store in an effort to seize financial records needed for an internal audit. However, sometime between 3 and 4 a.m., students broke into the store and changed the locks back. They then opened the store at its usual hour. Campus police and administrators moved in and emptied the store, but students then broke in again and kept the store open by staging a sit-in.

The audit of the store’s financial practices, a point of contention between students and administrators, was ordered in December.

On Thursday, Superior Court Judge James R. Milliken ruled in favor of the students and ordered UCSD officials to allow the store to operate, with the condition that students give the financial records to campus administrators.

UCSD officials hailed the ruling as a victory for the university.

“We are pleased with the judge’s findings because it affirms our insistence that audits must go forward without delay and that the facility can be closed in order to ensure an audit can take place,” Vice Chancellor Joseph W. Watson said.

“The judge made it clear they could not operate without first turning over those materials to us and to fully cooperate with the audit,” he said.

However, an attorney representing the co-op interpreted the judge’s ruling as favorable to her clients.

“The judge ruled that the General Store can and shall remain open,” said Lottie Cohen of Los Angeles. “We are pleased the court understands both the legal rights of the students to maintain their operations and reinforced the importance that the parties need to sit down and negotiate with each other.”

Earlier Thursday, college officials also asked students to decide whether they want to continue to operate the store as a campus co-op or become an independent vendor. The latter choice would allow students to operate the store under contract with the university, but would lead to higher lease rates and the loss of university-paid insurance coverage.

UCSD officials said they ordered the internal audit after they received a routine financial report last fall from the store that apparently included questionable cash register mistakes and three loans to store employees, and that lacked proper documentation of vendor payments. Officials also alleged that students failed to turn over the store’s records on several occasions.

But Cohen, the co-op attorney, denied the latter allegation, saying her clients had agreed on at least two occasions to hand over the records.