But what they do not tell you is that Che Cafe, an actual tenant of the University Centers, pays only $84 for rent — that’s less than what three students together pay in order to support part of a severely mismanaged venture. That is irresponsible planning and amounts to corporate welfare.

First, the reason why we have to be visually assaulted by multinational corporate franchises like Burger King and Bank of America ATMs at Price Center is because the money they pay in rent should work towards sustaining the University Centers. Instead, according to University Centers Advisory Board, UCSD charges businesses and vendors based on a percentage of their gross receipts.

Speaking as a political economist, this rent structure actually incentivizes business to close early, denying the University the opportunity to receive higher rents (businesses generally stay open longer to make more money) and forcing students to go off campus for food and dining. This new tax on students essentially amounts to corporate welfare.

Second, even after continual reports of a myriad of problems with Che Cafe, the co-ops and the crafts center, we are asked to again support an institutionalized failure to clean up the financial mismanagement. Instead of asking us if we should help Jamba Juice pay its rent, we should ask ourselves, “When was the last time we went to the co-op?”

Yet the co-ops and the large retail spaces they occupy have failed to pay any rent or have paid them intermittently as if fulfilling legal contracts were a choice. It is simply scandalous that the UCAB and the University Centers want to punish students instead when co-ops they oversee have accrued almost $45,000 of debt, much of that to the university according to the Guardian. It is simply scandalous that they allow the Che Cafe to pay $84 in rent while the cafe pockets $7 a ticket for their monthly punk rock concerts.

Instead of imposing a new two-decades long tax on students, UCAB and the proponents of the fee increase should tell us the facts. Businesses and corporations continue to profit on the backs of our increasingly burdened students by paying lower than market rent. The new fee increases will also allot a whopping $1.5 million to go towards a crafts center that receives only 44 students on an average month (according to 2011–2012 data). We need to face the facts: Every library has closed other than Geisel, and UC students have faced the burden of historically unprecedented tuition increases.

We must reject this UCAB fee initiative. To learn more, visit the website https://sites.google.com/site/nofeehike/.

— Jeffrey Kwong
Ph.D. Student
Department of Political Science