Well, yes, but the Memorial Stadium retrofits are not being done with public funds, so why the linkage?

Another op-ed piece complained about earthquake safety issues at Memorial Stadium and urged Cal to get on with the strengthening and safety programs, almost as if there were no lawsuits preventing Cal from doing exactly that.

There are indications that Cal is attempting to regain the initiative in the public discourse about the stadium issues. First there was Athletic Director Sandy Barbour's email to donors that spelled out the progress to date - as also the progress that is anticipated when the obstructing lawsuits are resolved.

More recently, Cal's Office of Public Affairs has been tasked with coordinating and guiding all communications related to the stadium and the Student Athlete High Performance Center.

Meetings will be held with key donors and supporters to brief them on progress, and an effort is underway to more completely inform the press as to the importance and urgency of the planned upgrades, even if that means being frank about some of the shortcomings in the facilities at Memorial.

In response to the inaccurate (or at least misleading) articles in the Chronicle, Nathan Brostrom, Cal's Vice Chancellor for Administration wrote a letter to the Chronicle's editor clarifying the issues that had been muddied by the publications. The Chronicle did not publish his letter, so we include it here.

Brostrom said:

Let there be no doubt, UC Berkeley is completely committed to providing its students, staff, faculty and fans with safe facilities. For that reason we endorse calls for expedited retrofitting of Memorial Stadium ("Shaky Ground", July 9). As a first step we will construct a new Student Athlete High Performance Center, a seismically safe structure that will allow us to relocate over 500 people who currently work and train under the stadium's stands. Were it not for unnecessary lawsuits, which have needlessly prolonged the risks to our student athletes, construction on the new center would have begun months ago. Because of the risks posed by delay, we hope to settle our differences out of court and are exploring ways to complete the retrofit of the stadium as quickly as possible.

Readers should know that funding for retrofitting and construction will come from private donors and ticket surcharges. This separates our endeavor from other Bay Area stadium projects that will rely on taxpayer subsidies. ("Are Stadiums Worth the High Price", July 8) Yet, with the support of our fans and alumni, we are confident in our ability to build new facilities and modernize a stadium that is a cultural icon and generates hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for the City of Berkeley and Bay Area businesses.

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