I just read the news that the Rice University Board is considering selling KTRU’s FCC license to NPR.  This is sad and disturbing news, to say the least.  I was the the News Editor and Managing Editor of the Rice Thresher for couple of years during the 1980s.  At that time, the Thresher and KTRU were separated by a flight of stairs in the old RMC, and there was a great deal of overlap between the two staffs.  Back in the day, before the advent of newspapers being laid out on computer screens, we at the Thresher pulled an all-nighter once a week putting the paper to bed by hand.  Our station of choice at 3:00 a.m., of course, was KTRU, and much of the music I still listen to today is music that I first heard coming over a static-filled radio speaker in the middle of the night while wielding an exacto-knife.  Whenever I am back in Houston, one of the first things I do is set the radio dial to 91.7.

Although I am a huge NPR fan, and I can certainly understand why a city the size of Houston would like to have more than one NPR station, this would be a short-sighted choice for the University.  Rice’s strength has always been its commitment to undergraduate education.  Student-run entities, such as KTRU and the Thresher, are a bigger part of that education than many realize.  True, I didn’t go into journalism after working on the Thresher.  I became a criminal trial lawyer, a civil libertarian, and small business owner, instead. But the lessons I learned helping to run that organization have stayed with me my entire adult life, just as much as anything I ever learned in an undergraduate classroom.  I’m sure that if you spoke to any former KTRU managers, they would tell you the same thing.

To Rice’s Board and NPR I would say that there’s got to be a better way.  Surely, NPR can’t be serious about promoting the public good if they are prepared to kill independent, educational radio in order to do it.  Surely, the University can find another way to shore up its endowment that doesn’t involve diluting the undergraduate experience that its endowment is there to support.

Rather than cutting KTRU back, the University should consider supporting it more.  Then again, maybe it’s been the University’s benign neglect over the years that has made KTRU such an eclectic, interesting station:  give a bunch of smart, creative kids some broadcasting equipment, leave them alone, and wait to see what happens.  What did happen is that some great radio was created and some young lives were changed at 3:00 a.m.

–W. David Friesenhahn
The W. David Friesenhahn Law Firm, PLLC
New Braunfels & Seguin, Texas
www.friesenhahnlaw.com
wdf1@wireweb.net
Lovett College
Class of 1986
Rice Thresher 1983-86