Over the course of four months, the COVE’s student interns wrote and released an open letter to the UC Santa Cruz administration — effectively revealing the UC Santa Cruz administration’s plans to downsize the COVE.
The COVE has been an on-campus recovery resource for more than 10 years. It supports students affected by alcoholism, substance abuse, and other addictions. The COVE welcomes students in recovery, individuals with loved ones struggling with addiction and their allies. It also serves as a sober space for any students seeking a substance-free community.
“The way that the COVE was built, the way that it was formed here at UCSC, was always for a community. The biggest thing [for] people in recovery is having community,” said Angelo Contreras, a student intern at the COVE. “That’s the one thing that saves a lot of people’s lives.”
On the morning of May 1, student interns of the COVE published the open letter on the COVE’s official Instagram account. The post accumulated 577 likes in under 24 hours but was removed on May 2 at 4 p.m. due to UCSC administrative members’ request for it to be taken down.
A non-UCSC affiliated Instagram account owned by the COVE student interns reposted the letter on May 6, with a petition to support the COVE attached. The petition has accumulated upwards of 200 signatures.
The letter details the UCSC administration’s current oversight of the COVE’s continued operations and includes a list of three demands to rectify the administration’s actions. The demands requested:
- Two pro-staff members
- Transparency in administrative processes in regard to the COVE’s future and
- “An appropriately-sized space with at least three private offices, or to stay in our current location”
At this point in time, the COVE’s hours have additionally been reduced by half. The center’s original hours were Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. They are now open Tuesday through Friday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
With only five interns running the COVE, who lack resources, easy access to funding, and adequate mentorship, the COVE’s activity has significantly decreased. Last year, approximately 20 to 30 students would pass through everyday; now, only around five students come by the COVE every week.
Maya Wax Cavallaro, a graduate student, was a COVE volunteer for the past six years, and is currently an inactive COVE peer mentor. While Cavallaro did not participate in writing the open letter, their personal experiences speak to the necessity of the COVE as a vital on-campus resource.
“As someone in recovery, and I’ve been on my wind[ing] recovery journey for about 14 years, I’ve lost a lot of people to addiction,” said Wax Cavallaro. “When people say, ‘Why is collegiate recovery important?’ I’m like, it’s literally life or death. People die from this.”
An Undelivered Promise of Full-Time Pro-staff
The open letter asserts that the UCSC administration has failed to provide adequate administrative and staff support since the resignation of the COVE’s previous prostaff, Jorge Bru. Bru resigned in Aug. of 2024 after almost nine years of service.
“We asked for two pro-staff[s] because our previous pro-staff was not able to run this place by themself,” Cortez said. “Then, John [Bollard, the Associate Vice Chancellor, Student Health & Wellness Chief Well-being Officer,] said, ‘No, sorry, a new person is going to come in and build their own structure, so that’s up to them to decide.’”
In other words, Bollard stated that the newly hired pro-staff will have jurisdiction over whether or not UCSC administration will hire a second pro-staff.
On average, Bru would see 12 students a day, with each meeting being 30 minutes. Bru met with both students who were seeking recovery support and students with substance related on-campus violations, who were required to attend one-on-one’s with Bru as a part of a disciplinary contract. Bru was the sole pro-staff responsible for communicating with UCSC administration, advising for social events, leading group support meetings, and more.
“[Bru] would usually go home at 8 p.m. on some nights, it was very heartbreaking to see their calendar,” said Cortez. “They sometimes forgot to eat and I would catch them multiple times having cereal for lunch.”
During their employment, Bru was supported by peer educators, student interns, and volunteers. Even with these supports in place, their workload was excessive. They advocated for the hiring of an additional pro-staff member several times before resigning, but the UCSC administration refused to fulfill their request.
Other support resources, like consistent group counseling programming or peer educators programming, are no longer active, have been adjusted, or have been temporarily suspended due to the move.
Despite the COVE’s low capacity, the UCSC Student Health Center (SHC) continues to refer students in need of recovery resources to the COVE and have previously attached Bru’s retired school email account to their communications. This mistake may be due to miscommunication or perhaps an overlooked detail in the SHC’s updates.
It is unknown how many students, some of which may have been in crisis, were referred to Bru’s inactive school email account.
A Call for Transparency
“The transparency was not there.” said Jennyfer Cortez, the COVE lead student intern. “Our funding for winter quarter [of 2025] — we didn’t know what our funding was and we still don’t know how much money we have.”
This past year, the COVE interns have struggled to access information about funding or receive budget quotes for social events and tabling. In years prior, pro-staff were responsible for managing funds and organizing logistics of tabling events and other outreach activities.
After Bru’s resignation, many pro-staff tasks fell on lead student intern Cortez to fulfill. She organized the COVE’s events, opened and closed the COVE trailer, created student intern schedules, organized student intern programming, served in informal peer mentorships and more.
As the lead intern of the COVE, Cortez was oftentimes requested to announce any changes to the COVE to the rest of the undergraduate team. She met with various administrative members tasked with overseeing the COVE and would sometimes receive contradictory information from different parties. Whether that was due to miscommunication is unconfirmed.
“The first time they ever asked me to keep anything to myself was [last] fall quarter,” said Cortez. “I met with the CARE director and they were telling me ‘Okay, the COVE is moving and we don’t know the place yet.’ Then, they shared the place with me and said, ‘Don’t tell anyone about the move.’”
Caught between holding an administrative position and being the lead intern, Cortez’s job became difficult to handle on her own — especially when administrative staff refused to relinquish basic information to the entirety of the team.
“Sometimes coming to the COVE felt very emotionally and mentally draining because it was just like, ‘What new shit are they gonna unload on me?’” said Cortez. “That I have to, once again, act professionally and respond professionally to them and be okay with it, knowing damn well that once the team finds out — none of us are gonna be happy.”
The COVE Shrinks to Fit Hahn Student Services
At the time of publication, the COVE is preparing to transition from the current Cowell College trailer to a new location in the Hahn Student Services building. The UCSC administration has postponed the move, which was supposed to happen during the spring quarter of the 2024-2025 academic year, to the fall quarter of the 2025-2026 academic year.
Naomi Chu, the current director of the Center for Advocacy, Resources & Empowerment (CARE), was tasked early in the 2024-2025 academic year with overseeing the COVE in the absence of official COVE prostaff. Chu notified Cortez, in fall quarter of 2024, that the COVE was scheduled to move to a new location in spring.
It was only after Cortez walked into the CARE offices and asked about the new location this past winter quarter, that she realized more than half of the COVE’s current property may not make it to the Hahn Student Services building.
“The new space was so shocking,” said Cortez. “[It’s] not even a third or fourth of the size of what we have right now.”
The Cove currently has five different rooms not including the lobby and entryways to the trailer. Each room was fully decorated with bits and pieces of art from various community members and students who would pass through the COVE daily, before the move was announced. Photos 1, 5, and 6 by Remy Francisco. Photos 2, 3, and 4 by Nidhi Bhat.
The COVE’s current location in the Cowell College trailer has an entryway and a lobby area with two couches, two arm chairs, a fridge, a microwave, three different cabinets, and a table overflowing with free food items. The trailer also has five other rooms, not including the single stall restroom.
Now, the COVE is being squeezed into a single room shared with another on-campus organization and will likely lose many of the characteristics that make it a community-space.
“The Cove is more than just a resource, it is a chosen family built through a community that is continuously overlooked and disregarded.” said the COVE interns in their open letter. “Those who founded and created this space, over 10 years ago, had the vision of fostering a forever location; a space students can find help without shame or judgment, away from clinical procedures and intimidation.”
Photos by Nidhi Bhat. The first of the rooms serves as a space for relaxation with two large, black-leather massage chairs, an air purifier, ambient lighting, a shelf with spiritual books, and a small bedside table. Another room – which has not been photographed for the purpose of maintaining privacy of staff and students seeking help – serves as an office space for staff members of CARE and of the Student Health Outreach and Promotion (SHOP) who have been tasked with overseeing the COVE until a new pro-staff member is hired.
The third room was used as an arts and crafts room, as well as a conference room. Prior to packing up the COVE, staff members decorated the walls of the conference room with student artwork. It has two desktops, a free-of-charge printer, four arm chairs, a flat-screen TV, and an empty cabinet that was once chock-full of art supplies. 
The last two smaller rooms, now filled with brown moving boxes, chairs and unused desks, originally served as confidential spaces for peer educators to speak with students seeking private one-on-one support.
The New COVE Location
The new location is at the Hahn Student Services building in the CARE office space. It is located behind the CARE front desk, which will later be moved, and consists of three walls, a deli-door, plus a soon-to-be constructed fourth wall.
According to Cortez, the fourth wall is meant to protect the identities of students seeking help from CARE and the COVE. While CARE has designated confidential meeting rooms, it is unconfirmed as to whether or not the COVE will have private rooms following the move.
The COVE’s Future
On May 8, COVE student interns met with members of the UCSC administration over Zoom to voice their concerns and demands.
Following the meeting, Associate Vice Chancellor Bollard sent the COVE interns an email with the following three action items: 1. “I am going to see whether it’s possible to get a second dedicated office in the CARE space for COVE staff/peers”
2. “I’m going to contact our new director and try to arrange a meeting for you (with them) before commencement.”
3.“I am going to send something to our clinical staff to let them know that Jorge is no longer with COVE and we will broadly advertise the contact information for the new Director”
As of May 23, 22 days after the initial Instagram post, Scott Hernandez-Jason, assistant vice chancellor of communications and marketing, reported that a new pro-staff has been hired.
“We’ve also recently hired a new director for the COVE and are arranging a meeting to help her connect directly with students,” said Hernandez-Jason in an email to City on a Hill Press. “We remain committed to supporting students in meaningful and responsive ways and look forward to continuing these conversations as we work together to strengthen that support.”
Of the five student interns who created the letter, four are scheduled to graduate in June of 2025.
“I just really want respect,” said student intern Angelo Contreras, “I think it goes back to this bigger picture of looking at the people we serve. There’s already a lot of stigma around people in recovery. We’re not receiving the same care and services as other resources.”
More Recovery Resources:
The attached links offer a number of local recovery resources in Santa Cruz County, Monterey County, and federal resources. Resources include directives for individuals seeking sober living environments (SLEs), preventative resources, outpatient treatments, residential treatment plans, self help alternatives, addictions anonymous meetings, youth recovery programs, and more.
211: A 24-hour hotline which looks to provide information and referrals to those in need. They are available through call or text, 24/7.
California Smokers’ Hotline: 1800-NO-BUTTS
Recovery Wave: A substance abuse resource page for the County of Santa Cruz. They aim to aid anyone struggling with substance abuse issues.
Salud Para La Gente: A non-profit healthcare organization based in Santa Cruz and North Monterey County. They can be reached through their phone number, (831) 728-0222
Janus: A substance abuse program based in Santa Cruz County, which aims to provide support through treatment services. They can be reached through their phone number, (831) 462-1060.
Santa Cruz Narcotics Anonymous: A nonprofit fellowship that offers narcotics anonymous meetings in multiple locations of Santa Cruz County. The organization has a weekly schedule that is open to the general public. They can be reached through their phone number, (855) 562-2789.
Alcoholics Anonymous Santa Cruz County: A program that supports and hosts alcoholic anonymous (A.A.) group sessions, providing those who struggle with alcohol abuse. They can be reached through their phone number, 831-475-5782, or through their email address, info@aasantacruz.org
