Rice has reputation for not interacting with city, but KTRU is one of the ways that we did,” says Laura Elizabeth Bellows, an alum and a DJ for six years. “Even after college, it’s something that keeps me connected to Rice, so shutting it down, it makes me much less likely to donate, not just because I’m angry but because that connection is lost.

Read the full article on CultureMap >

Rice students opposed to the sale of their radio station KTRU to the University of Houston have called for a protest 2 p.m. Sunday afternoon, at Willy’s Statue in the quad on campus.

Read the full article on the Houston Press Blog >

More information about the protest from SaveKTRU.org >

Yang and other KTRU representatives made the case for keeping KTRU on the Houston airwaves: It’s a “vital and thriving” student organization on campus, a reason students attend and alumni donate, a vital media outlet for the community and one of the most visible symbols in Houston of Rice.

Read the full article on CultureMap >

Nowhere else on the dial can members of one community get the unique blend of programming they get on one radio station. But now this beloved student-run station is in jeopardy, and students are fighting to save it.

Read the full article on youthradio.us»

Locally speaking, I think KTRU is an entirely unique outlet for underexposed musicians. My shows are dedicated to it, but every show on the air includes local music from a wide variety of genres.

Read the full article on 29-95.com »

The administration of Rice University has an obligation, as a trustee of its students, faculty and alumni, to value our contributions and opinions just as concretely as it does a new building. Not only have you and the Board of Trustees failed to do so, you have made crucial and irreversible decisions about an invaluable part of this university in secret, without consulting or informing the people for whose benefit the institution ostensibly exists. This is a breach of trust and a violation of the mores of liberal education. It is unethical.

Read the full, impassioned letter at Nonalignment Pact >

[T]he agenda item for Tuesday’s public meeting at which the U of H purchase approved negotiating the purchase may have been lacking in full disclosure, said Joe Larsen, a lawyer with the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas.

[U of H rep Karen Clarke] said as the deal progressed over the last few weeks, Rice “was concerned about why it would go public and even said, ‘Why do we have to do this in public?’

“We knew that some Rice students might be upset, but the way it was portrayed [by Rice] was that it was a small and insignificant number and that they would manage it. We never got the impression that it would cause an uproar.”

Read the full article on Texas Watchdog »

I was around in the late 1960’s when KTRU was started as a pirate radio station.  It arose during the “Bat Masterson” crisis when the Board selected Dr. Masterson to become President of the University, without any public comment or consideration.  The ruckus that arose involved  a clear majority of the student body at the time.  After a few days, Dr. Masterson withdrew his name from consideration or resigned his position.  At that time, there was no real campus-wide means of communication and rumors of all kinds were circulating wildly.  Some industrious students set up the little pirate station to serve as an information clearing house, with a signal that served virtually all of the Rice campus but no more.

Subsequent to the resolution of the Bat Masterson crisis,  the student who initially set the station up and ran it decided that they liked it, so it continued to broadcast music, have call in shows, and even hosted student “talk” radio.

KTRU was born as the result of actions being taken by the Board, presumably in secret because they knew that their decision would not be a popular one.  Now today, the identical procedure has been followed, again knowing that the decision would not be a popular one.  Whether it is the right thing to do or not is beyond my capacity to judge; however I can assure anyone that in my opinion, this is not the way the University should be conducting its business if it has any interest in retaining the support of this alumnus.

Gene Hinyard

Greetings,

I am not a Rice University student, but I am an avid KTRU listener, and I disapprove wholeheartedly of this attempted sale of the station. KTRU is not just a radio station, it is the last and only truly independent station; dismantling the airwaves will result in a deep wound that can never be mended.

After being exposed to the more intriguing and out sounds at the KTRU station, I started my own band specializing in the melding of free form noise, hip hop and folk – No Sunlite for the Media. Through this band, I have had many great opportunities to explore the power of sound and song, and to turn many other friends on to the enlightening sounds at the Rice station. In fact, when our band produces records we only send them to a single radio station – KTRU – since this station is the only legitimate broadcasting station that exists. KTRU is not simply another commodity to be traded, it is invaluable truth in radio wave form that can reach many. I was content in knowing that at least somewhere there was an institution that supported free thinking music and media that pushed beyond the mundane, and I am deeply saddened by this projected sale.

Although my car has Virginia plates, the bumper bears a KTRU rice radio sticker, and if this sale continues I will never explain again what the “rice radio” part of the sticker means without coupling my explanation with anger toward an institution so blind as to shut down its strongest asset. I am encouraging all of my friends who attend the school to cease financially supporting the university, I will no longer advertise for this college in any way (with clothing or otherwise), I no longer will have any reason to visit Houston, and I will actively explain to others why they should not attend an institution that has sold out if this sellout continues.

Please do not let this disgrace happen to your university.

Sincerely,
Matthew Horne

The opportunity of being a DJ at KTRU was the major deciding factor in my attending Rice.  I had a full scholarship at the Cooper Union in NYC, and also a full scholarship at Rutgers in New Jersey.  I decided to pay to attend Rice because of my desire to be a college DJ.

People are often surprised when they find out I was a DJ because I am very reserved, but for me it was about the music.  At KTRU I was exposed to (and I exposed the Houston area to) new genres of music and music from different cultures.  I often had the 7-9 am shift, and I had commuters call me to thank me for making their commute better.

Regards,
Diane (Golomb) Levi, Lovett ’95, B.Arch’97

While I was at Rice, I joined the one of the newest student media organizations at the time, RBT, now RTV5, the student run television station.  As a young growing organization, we looked to other outlets like KTRU and the Thresher for inspiration.  One of the first things I noticed about KTRU then was their ability to attract volunteers.  There are not many organizations on campus or off that can pull a volunteer in at 4 AM.

As the station manager at RBT I had many opportunities to learn just how special KTRU is as a media organization.  We shared faculty and staff advisors, cooperated on campus event coverage, and experimented with combined content.  We attended several college media conferences with KTRU and the Thresher, and it was clear that while Rice’s student newspaper and the newly formed student TV station could compare to much bigger and more highly funded organizations at larger schools, KTRU was in a class by itself.  Most people knew KTRU without much introduction, and those that didn’t would soon learn of the college radio station, operating at 50,000 watts, that did not need to deal with advertising or fundraising in general.  While other college radio stations learn how to legally seek underwriting while honoring their non-commercial FCC license, or fret over how to pay someone to take the midnight shift, KTRU gets to focus on bringing music and other programming to their listeners and their community. With so much energy in college media spent just trying to keep the organization afloat (this is increasingly true in commercial media too), creating meaningful content is often a secondary concern.  KTRU exemplifies the model of content as a primary concern.  Without an FM transmitter, that model will be difficult to continue.

I’m writing this letter from my desk at work as a software engineer.  I didn’t go into the broadcasting field, and I don’t even own a video camera now.  However, I count my experience with those student organizations along with all my other experiences at Rice as an integral part of my degree.  I was only indirectly involved with KTRU, but it enriched my experience at Rice.

Selling the FM transmission equipment and license is not reversible.  There is no real option of regaining this part of Rice once it’s gone.  91.7 FM is not worth $9.5 million – it’s priceless.  Please save KTRU.

Richard Adams

Will Rice 2004

I was a DJ at KTRU from 1996-1999. I remember my first shift was at 4am to 7 am, and that I got a phone call from workers on an oil rig miles offshore thanking me for a song one lonely morning. I remember seeing bands come visit the studio for interviews and drool over the music collection accumulated over the years. I remember the sense of purpose everyone that volunteered at the station felt, and the hours they would give to keep the station broadcasting.

KTRU was such a vital part of my time at Rice, and it made me happy in the years since I graduated to know that current students shared some of the same experiences I had. I am so hurt and saddened that the administration of Rice never remotely appreciated what a unique and valuable resource they had. Whatever they purchase with the $9.5 million they get from selling the station, it will never be worth the unique portion of the Rice experience that they destroy, the link to the Houston community they lose, or the loyalty of the alumni they have betrayed.

-Elio Abbondanzieri
Hanszen, ’99

I worked at KTRU for a couple of years and listened all the time.  The experience I had then still informs the way I listen to music today and the way I support my local radio station. The experience also made me more comfortable in addressing groups of people, which is pretty crucial since I spend a lot of my time before students.  I think that every university should have a radio station (the one I’m at now certainly does), and that Rice will be impoverished without one.  Good luck with the fight.

William Ethan Duckworth, `93, Lovett
Associate Professor
Department of Mathematical Sciences
Loyola University Maryland

The following is excerpted from a letter sent from KPFT to KTRU.

Dear KTRU DJs and friends,

It is with great sadness that we observe the fate facing KTRU, a Houston cultural institution that blazed trails. It offered programming commercial radio would never touch or, in rare cases, would only make way for many years later.

We empathize with the financial troubles besetting Rice University. As a nonprofit, KPFT is constantly facing a challenging fiscal outlook and media landscape.

We share your concerns about media consolidation, and we hope this struggle reminds everyone about the need for true media diversity.

KPFT management thinks it would be a shame to lose so many incredible KTRU programs.

…

KPFT’s staff recognize you have unique talents and we genuinely want you to be part of Houston’s first and, possibly, last community radio outlet. Houston’s music and cultural scenes need you.

In solidarity,

Ernesto Aguilar
Program Director, KPFT

Duane Bradley
General Manager, KPFT

Read the full statement at KPFT.org »

Hey y’all
Just wanted to say that I’m a KTRU-believer in New England. I lived in Houston for my first twenty years. I’m a DJ at WMUA, the college radio station at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. With no hyperbole, I wouldn’t have ever been inspired to do my own radio show (and my record collection wouldn’t exist) if KTRU hadn’t completely transformed my view of music when I was a weird misfit kid on the fringes of suburban Houston who stumbled across KTRU on the radio dial in 1995 or 1996.

I cherish the notebooks I still have with KTRU playlists from the mid-to-late ’90s meticulously archived in my awkward teenage handwriting, complete with commentary (like “BEDHEAD”, with lots of exclamation points). Seriously, when I was growing up in Houston, ALL I wanted to do was be a DJ at KTRU someday. In high school, the first thing I did when I inherited my hand-me-down car was to slap a KTRU bumper sticker on the back window. I didn’t have cool older siblings to give me a musical education & my only outlet for finding out about creative, unconventional music was fanatically buying independent music zines from strip-mall bookstores. When I discovered KTRU, I was finally able to actually HEAR all of this great music I had been reading about. That’s what saddens me the most about all of this – online radio is fine (we stream online at WMUA & I know a lot of people listen via that outlet), but you can’t replace that serendipity of flipping through the radio dial at random & stumbling across something that blows your mind.

When people find out that I’m from Houston, the very first thing I rave about is not the museums, not the Vietnamese food, but KTRU. Every time I come back to Houston to visit my family, my mom makes sure that she has KTRU on in the car when she picks me up from the airport. I’ve been spreading the word about this awful news to all of the DJs & listeners at WMUA, posting about it on my radio playlist blog & sending out links through the WMUA Facebook page – even though most of them have never been lucky enough to actually listen to KTRU, it’s obvious how much the station impacted me during my formative years & they recognize the need to voice their support for college radio EVERYWHERE. Western Mass college radio is in solidarity with y’all!

Erika Elizabeth
Expressway To Yr Skull – WMUA 91.1FM, Amherst, MA