AN OPEN LETTER
Dear Friends at the UCSC Alumni Association and at UC:
Recently you have called me to renew my contributions to UCSC.
I cannot in good conscience contribute to any University of California charity while the present situation continues.
I am a proud graduate of the University of California. Today some of my close friends are professors at various campuses; others are staff members at UCSC.
Today I am absolutely shaken, shocked and ashamed of the University. If I were a student today, it would have been me they were pepper spraying.
When I was at UC there were protests over the apartheid regime in South Africa, among other issues. Students erected encampments to show the bantustans forced on the black population by that racist government. Would campus adminstrations have used pepper spray to break up these encampments? I would have been unthinkable.
To use pepper spray, which is outlawed by international conventions for use in warfare, on citizens nonviolently expressing their rights to dissent is despicable. Such police state tactics have no place in a democracy.
Those responsible for outrageous police brutality, up to and including the chancellors, should be dismissed.
Most sincerely yours,
Jeremy Grainger
Cowell College, UCSC, 1980
BA Women’s Studies 1980
