Last year, in our endorsement of current Commissioner of Enterprise Operations Angela Chen’s opponent, this board wrote that Chen “has potential but not much else.” Perhaps that was too generous of an appraisal.
Under her watch, the struggling office did little to move forward on major reforms needed to turn the A.S. businesses around (although Chen did bring dining dollars back to the Grove) and perhaps even make a significant profit someday. However, we believe that Chen’s current Director of Enterprise Operations Sydney Goldberg has the right vision and passion to succeed where Chen failed.
This board wholeheartedly endorses Goldberg’s plan to reign in the career managers who currently bungle the job of running the student enterprises — which include A.S. Safe Rides, Lecture Notes and Grove Caffe — by demanding hiring and firing authority; the current enterprise commissioner is probably the world’s only CEO that has no control over her employees. Similarly, Goldberg’s goals to renegotiate the contract governing the co-owned ropes course in east campus and to demand more control over student-funded buildings, though ambitious, are spot on. We also believe Goldberg would bring a collaborative and goal-oriented management style, a welcome remedy to Chen’s, who will leave the office largely dispirited and lacking motivation.
Our endorsement, however, comes with several qualifications. Goldberg, we believe, stakes too much of the enterprise office’s future on the Triton Store, a sundry retailer she hopes to include in the Price Center expansion.
What the enterprise office badly needs is diversification — away from the retail sector that has been its mainstay, into more services-oriented industries that can tap into the diverse and technical skills of UCSD students. In this regard, Goldberg’s vision of the office is too narrow: She must realize that students benefit not only when they actually use the campus enterprises, but also through the revenue these raise.
Goldberg, however, is hands above her Tritons United! opponent Parris Bass. While Bass declined to meet with this board after a personal emergency caused him to cancel his initial interview, we are confident that his platform would further debilitate the student enterprises; his proposal for a Price Center ice cream cart, though perhaps an appropriate fifth-grade venture, along with the omnipresent lemonade stands, is even less practical than the Triton Store.
Similarly, Bass’ plan to make Lecture Notes — one of the few successful enterprises — free and bring dining dollars to Soft Reserves for students is unrealistic and untenable. The enterprises simply can’t afford either. His pledge to monitor health-code compliance at university-run eateries is also rather harebrained; the mission of enterprises is to make money, not enforce government regulation.
In this race, we confidently back Goldberg as the best hope for actually making that money.
