Entries this day: AP_KTRU Lunch

AP KTRU

05 December 2000

Rice students protest closing of radio station

12/05/2000
Associated Press Newswires
Copyright 2000. The Associated Press. All Rights
Reserved.

HOUSTON (AP) - Hundreds of Rice University students
rallied Monday to
protest the administration's shutdown of the campus
radio station.
University officials shut down station KTRU-FM on
Thursday because disc
jockeys, protesting a push to air more athletic
events, played music 
during
a women's basketball game.
"For over 30 years, KTRU has been one of the most
successful and 
creative
outlets for student expression at an American
university," said former 
KTRU
general manager Roddy Gibbs, a 1992 Rice graduate who
traveled from his
Austin home to address the rally.
The 50,000-watt station, one of the nation's most
powerful college 
radio
stations, has been run by students since it opened in
the late 1960s.
University officials are trying to negotiate a power
struggle with the
students over the station's autonomy. Meanwhile, the
station operates 
with
broadcast feeds from the World Radio network.
Rice is proposing that a committee of students and
administrators 
oversee
station policy but allow students to make most
programming decisions,
"If the issue is 100 percent student autonomy, it's
well clear that's 
not
going to happen," Rice spokesman Terry Shepard told
the Houston 
Chronicle in
Tuesday's editions. "Anyone who has a job knows you do
not have 
complete
autonomy, you have responsibilities to your employer.
All we're saying 
is
it's a lesson in responsibility."
Student protesters rejected the university's position.
"They say accountability and responsibility, but what
they mean is 
control,"
computer science graduate student John Clements told
fellow students at 
the
rally.
"They want a station of moderate viewpoints, total
pushovers," he said. 
"You
guys have a brain and a heart, you're not what they're
looking for."
Some protesters illustrated their point by covering
their mouths with
KTRU-FM bumper stickers, to signify the station being
silenced. They 
put the
same bumper sticker on the mouth of the statue of
William Marsh Rice, 
the
university's founder.
Station manager Johnny So, a senior from Pasadena,
said the students 
won't
budge on student control. But he said a resolution is
possible by this 
week.

Lunch

noonish Tuesday 05 December 2000

During my lunch, I zipped over to Rice to hang out at the KTRU booth and read over the proposed document that defines how KTRU will be made accountable to the students of Rice University. I made some suggestions and gave them to Mike OC (who DJed with Lizzie T after my Saturday shift) who will relay them at a meeting tonight at 10:30pm.

Let it be known that I rode my (borrowed) unicycle all the way from the stadium to the RMC and back!

permalink