The Progressive THINKERS: [SDCPJ] An Open Letter to Pradeep Khosla: News reports on today's protest agai nst eviction of C.H.E. CAFE

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

[SDCPJ] An Open Letter to Pradeep Khosla: News reports on today's protest agai nst eviction of C.H.E. CAFE

An Open Letter to Pradeep Khosla:
News reports on today's protest against eviction of C.H.E. CAFE

---------- Forwarded Open Letter ----------

From: "Monty Kroopkin" <mkroopkin@juno.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2015 04:28:14 GMT
To: chancellor@ucsd.edu
Cc: governor@governor.ca.gov,
Speaker.Atkins@assembly.ca.gov,
regentsoffice@ucop.edu,
president@ucop.edu,
juangonzalez@ucsd.edu,
grratcliff@ucsd.edu,
svanbruggen@ucsd.edu
Subject: News reports on today's protest against eviction of CHE CAFE

Dear Chancellor Pradeep Khosla:

Please see below a collection of the local news reports today. Although reporters tend to find the facts complex and may get various points not quite right, they are attracted to this story like iron to a magnet because they know there is truly 'something rotten in Denmark'. You are giving UCSD a black eye. You know the C.H.E. Cafe is not only supported by punk rock fans in their teens and twenties, right? You know that doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, journalists, editors, artists and intellectuals and highly respected professionals in all spheres also support it, right?

If you think the past year of conflict over the C.H.E. Cafe is nearing an end point, you are sorely mistaken. Now that you have actually served an eviction notice on the C.H.E. Cafe Collective, the real conflict is only just beginning.The Artists' Boycott of UCSD will expand. An Alumni Boycott will be started. You may expect to see the misconduct of your administration become an issue in the Academic Senate. Your tenure as UCSD Chancellor may prove to be one of the shortest in history.

You can stop this at any moment. Stop the eviction. Restore the lease. Stop lying about the safety and structural soundness of the building. It is not truly an old building, even. Certainly not by East Coast or Old World standards.

Instead of creating intense divisions in our community and wasting probably more than $100,000 of tax-payer money on attorney fees and court costs (thus far), trying to obliterate a cultural and educational treasure and a shining light of University Diversity, you could devote a little energy toward nurturing it. You could seek alumni donations and endowments for it, and for the other campus student cooperatives.

Perhaps this is all a matter of you getting very bad advice and incomplete information from your subordinates. You could publicly say so and apologize. You could replace some of them.

Sincerely,
Monty Kroopkin, B.A, UCSD Class of 1981
C.H.E Cafe Support Network

cc:

Governor Jerry Brown governor@governor.ca.gov

State Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins Speaker.Atkins@assembly.ca.gov

Board of Regents of the University of California regentsoffice@ucop.edu

UC President Janet Napolitano president@ucop.edu

UCSD Vice Chancellor Juan Gonzalez    juangonzalez@ucsd.edu
UCSD Associate Vice Chancellor Gary Ratcliff    grratcliff@ucsd.edu
UCSD UCEN Director Sharon Van Bruggen    svanbruggen@ucsd.edu