I would tend to agree with jefe to a certain extent, but that's no reason not to advocate and organize for such a thing. I think the most significant problem with the campus co-ops, whether they've failed (like Whole Earth, the JunXion, Sluggo's or PedX on the Hill) or whether they're still around, is that they have been dependent on a stream of energetic and eager students. While this gives student co-ops verve, it isn't a recipe for longevity. If a co-op is to take over that space (i've advocated for this on the UCSC survey, as an alum), i think it needs to be a worker collective that will really provide a livelihood for people who are already working on campus. It would have been great if the folks who were running Whole Earth (and who'd been doing it for some time) could have found a way to revitalize that joint by organizing with the folks getting shafted in the kitchens of the dining halls.
Generally, campus co-ops are more concerned with providing a training ground for students in the priniciples of cooperative organization. Unfortunately, they rarely go beyond that to serve the actual economic needs of the workers. If cooperative economies are ever to replace the profiteering of companies like Sodexho-Marriott, they need to stop relying on a workforce willing to work for little to nothing because their needs are taken care of elsewhere (by a decidedly non-cooperative economic arrangement).
The challenge isn't to find a bunch of crusties willing to throw their lives into running a crusty restaurant, but to organize with people who already work in that industry, who know their shit and who might actually benefit by throwing the boss off their back. They may not cling to an ideology telling them to buy only organic and local produce, but they may do so anyway simply because they have a brother whose job in the fields they want to support and an uncle debilitated by pesticide poisoning who they want to vindicate.
Use your priviledge as students, alumni/ae, and residents of Santa Cruz to pressure the University to provide real economic and social justice to the folks who've been paid shit wages in the back kitchens of University dining halls, many of them for over a decade. The University will be ill-inclined to support a bunch of crusty punks and hippies trying to establish a nice little cooperative venture (like so many before it) who they know will likely flake off and make the restaurant into a blight on their beloved new plaza.