Copy of Email sent 3rd Jan 2020 to RAUIL with regards to next week's meetup. Draft letter to press withheld from public view. 

Richmond Alumni <richmonduniversityalumni@gmail.com>
to:
"Dalrymple, Helen" <DALRYMH@richmond.ac.uk>

cc:
"richardresch714@gmail.com" <richardresch714@gmail.com>,
President's Office <PRESIDENT@richmond.ac.uk>,
"Deans, Phil" <PHIL.DEANS@richmond.ac.uk>,
"ckleiter@gmail.com" <ckleiter@gmail.com>,
"damemary@btinternet.com" <damemary@btinternet.com>,
Zemar Dajani <dajani.zemar@yahoo.com>,
Damien Ashton-Wellman <dashtonwellman@gmail.com>,
k3burch@gmail.com,
gonzalo.diaz-rio_varez@kcl.ac.uk,
cassandra.pittman@edhec.edu,
srasch@loebblock.com,
Wgertz@aifs.com,
jburg@aifs.com,
mberry@aifs.co.uk,
Abrookes@aifs.co.uk,
Penny.Egan@rsa.org.uk,
moynitrust@gmail.com,
Daniel.Morris16@btinternet.com

Date:
Jan 3, 2020, 8:46 PM

Dear Helen,

Thank you for your email. We, representatives of the Richmond University Alumni, are writing to you in your capacity as the representative of the President and Chair of the Board of Trustees. 

The Alumni look forward to participating in a meeting next week and we support partnership as a solution to ensure the University continues. You indicated there were several potential partnership discussions ongoing. Thursday 9th January at 14:00 pm works best for the Alumni Team who will meet with you both physically and via video conferencing. Please make arrangements to facilitate that and advise us where to meet at Richmond for the Alumni Team members who wish to attend in person. The Alumni Team members include: Zemar Dajani,  Cassandra Rae, Damien Ashton-Wellman, Gonzalo Diaz-Rio Varez, Daniel Morris and myself. In addition, as part of our team is the parent of a current student, Kristi Burch.  

You have noted that the Alumni will be excluded from the 7 January meeting. We will withhold further interaction with the press provided the Alumni are guaranteed that there will not be a decision to close Richmond University at the meeting of 7 January or prior to meeting with us in our role as Alumni representatives. This is a highly critical point to our past and current graduates.  Should we not receive a response with such a guarantee by end of business on Monday 6th Jan 2020, we may release the information to the press to follow up on prior to the meeting of 7 January or at the earliest time possible. Based on the tone of your letter, providing us this guarantee should not be an issue. If, in fact, it is an issue, the Alumni will need to act prior to the meeting to raise these questions before the public.

The Alumni have obtained information from multiple sources including: staff, faculty, and students; we have provided information in the charity commission complaint to the Member of Parliament for Richmond Park, who has written to CTCF to demand answers—in particular why closure is being considered, given CTCF’s purpose to support the University? Many people providing us with information expressed fear of retribution from CTCF/AIFS for bringing matters to our attention and we cannot allow a university to operate with such lack of transparency.

The former President’s complaint to the charity commission ended years of inaction where it appears the University allowed AIFS (and then CTCF) to exercise extraordinary control of its finances. The University was weak by not being able to hold AIFS accountable for its commercial responsibilities as well as its health and safety legal obligations, the latter of which seem to have been ignored by AIFS, the owner of the University’s properties. This long-term pattern of negligence and inaction needs to cease immediately, and we cannot have those who allowed this to be responsible for making decisions for the University going forward, as clearly they do not have the University's best interests at heart.

When we meet with you, we would like to discuss this with you and learn more about your commitment to continuing the University through the partnerships you are exploring. We also need to understand the specific demands you are making of the CTCF charity to guarantee it supports the University and the leadership of the University to manage these challenges.

We are including a draft of our letter for possible release to the press, so that you are all aware of our position. We are also sending a copy of this letter to members of AIFS/CTCF so that they too are aware of the same and act accordingly in the best interests of RAUIL (please refer to the attached PDF).

We look forward to everyone’s combined efforts to secure the long term future of RAUIL with the right partnerships, funding, long term strategy, and transparency. We offer the support of the Alumni to achieve this objective. 

Kind regards,

Davey, Zemar, Kristi, Cassandra, Damien, Daniel, & Gonzalo

On behalf of the Alumni of Richmond American University in London