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The following letter appeared in the California Aggie, the UC Davis student newspaper on October 1, 2002 and is reprinted by permission of the author.

Not a boon to arts
As the lecturers and students who support them prepare to protest the opening of the Mondavi Center, some have called for an end to the protest, worrying that it will do irreparable harm to the meaning and spirit of the event and send a poor message for the arts.

Poor message for the arts? I know of few students who can afford $150 tickets for champagne and a special performance by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

The Mondavi Center is a scourge upon this campus, a campus that promotes the building of a $60-million atrocity to appease egos in the music department, which has sadly never managed to regain the luster it possessed in the70s, and the egos of the administration.

As an undergraduate student who feels involved, knowledgeable, and who studies the art, I can absolutely say that we as students would have much preferred, indeed loved, to have had over $60 million invested in livable housing, which largely doesn't exist in Davis; in teachers who care about us, who are being terminated with great speed by the same administration that brought us the $60-million eyesore; and ultimately in making this university a place of superior academic scholarship, with great personal contact between faculty and students. A $60-million edifice, which shall loom empty and alone on the perimeter of the campus, does more to make me furious at the squandering of generosity than it does having a love of the arts.

With regards to this so-called great boon for the arts, I can say that students would cherish open-air performances on the lawns, operas performed on the steps of Mrak Hall, where they could relax in ease, with sandals and towels lining the freshly mowed lawns, rather then sitting in the hideous, windowless, redemption-less Mondavi Center. Sadly, none of these community events exist, for the most part, and the university has yet to consider serious arts funding i.e. arts for everyone, not just for those with money to burn for a seat in a center that does more to degrade the morale of the best teachers we have.

Though much of this may be accused as being rhetoric without foundation, I can say with absolute certainty that I will be there to protest the opening of this center and regardless of the criticism that it will send the wrong message for the arts, I can guarantee you that I love the arts, and I do happen to love this campus and the people who make it worth my time to go here, but I will not be intimidated by the possible alienation of those who see the Mondavi Center as a great tribute to the arts. The greatest patron of the arts is honesty, and expression of that honesty, and if I alienate those who believe it to be otherwise, so be it. I am an artistic person who wants to make the world better, and I do not care about a building that looms adversely to that objective.

It is with a glorious feeling of life that I will be there, a feeling of taking a stand for arts, against profits and unfounded prestige, and I will bring all the energy I have to help make this a successful message: Education isn't about buildings and having a premier art stage; it's about the people who go largely unseen in the classrooms that make the arts what they are.

MICHAEL LOPEZ
UC Davis