Dear Editor:

The article entitled “Fighting Fire” that you published on Feb. 13, 2014, which described the Editorial Board’s thoughts regarding the fires set in Price Center on Dec. 3, 2013, was a lazy, if well-intentioned, piece of writing. It seemed that the Editorial Board’s purpose was to encourage safer forms of protest. However, the Editorial Board’s message boiled down to “don’t set fires,” a poorly informed, poorly thought-out and unhelpful opinion.

Furthermore, the article made inappropriate assumptions about the nature of the incident. The Editorial Board assumed that A) the fires were started by UCSD students and B) the fires were started in protest of Starbucks. Neither of these assumptions has been confirmed by police.

These assumptions created the impression that the Editorial Board was assuming the guilt of the suspects in the case. In fact, as you printed on the front page of the same issue, the investigation is still ongoing. The editorial was, therefore, misleading and could have very serious, if unintended, consequences.

You would do a service to the UCSD community by publishing a retraction to correct these errors.

— Josh Kenchel
Revelle College Senior