Chancellor Block while you extend the reach of UCLA overseas, here at home your decisions and those of your Athletic Director are bringing disgrace and humiliation to our great University. And yet you refuse to meet with concerned alumni about the state of the most honored athletic department in the nation.
When Mexi and I tried to meet with Chancellor Block to deliver the petitions and to ask questions about the hiring of Steve Alford, we were met by campus security and a public relations employee that "escorted" us to Chancellor Block's office. The Chancellor never acknowledged receiving the petitions, never responded to attempts to make an appointment, and has never responded to the many inquiries made by so many of us here at Bruins Nation. My request on the phone was met with the statement, "well you can't expect the Chancellor to be available to the public?" Well, I guess if I am an alumni in Taiwan with a ton of money the Chancellor would be available to meet. But I am just a public school teacher serving the same state and city the Chancellor is supposed to serve. While I applaud the Chancellor's efforts to develop relations abroad that might serve our University, I deplore his refusal to meet with and answer questions with the public he is paid to serve.
So Chancellor Block, is Kontractgate the reason why? Would you rather build relations with alumni abroad than meet with alumni right here in the state you were hired to serve? Were you so afraid we would find out the truth that you cut off access to all who wanted to know? I would not want to answer questions about this hiring either. We thought the controversy surrounding Alford's hiring were, dare I say, limited to Dan's hiring a rape apologist. Now we see there is much more. You agreed to an obscene contract with an unprecedented buyout clause. You have allowed your Athletic Director to give away the store to an unproven coach with proven character issues.
You need to be held accountable for negligence, or is it complicity, in the matters surrounding the hiring of Steve Alford. You do not work for a private university with unlimited funds that can get away with serving only the well connected and the powerful. You serve the state of California and are charged with being the steward of it's greatest public university. You have failed at this Dr. Block. And while you are away, making strides to develop relations abroad, you are destroying them at home.
I know Dr. Block, that you are a biologist, not an historian. But even you must know that many great empires have been destroyed by prioritizing relations abroad and not at home. While you try to strengthen our University from abroad, it is crumbling from within. While you receive great press overseas Chancellor, our Athletic Department is being exposed here and here and sadly here at home. You have given the keys to the candy store to a man whose advice to other directors is "consume wildly". Not a wise choice, Chancellor. And now you must be held accountable for that decision.