Dear President Leebron and the Honorable Members of the Board;

I know you have received many letters on this subject, so I’ll attempt to be brief. I love Rice University and would not be the person I am today if I had matriculated at any other school. I write to let you know that you have made a grave mistake both by authorizing the sale of KTRU and the manner in which you have handled this transaction.

When I was a high school senior in the mid 90s in suburban Houston, I stumbled upon KTRU. They were playing the song “Underground” by the group Ben Folds Five, and I fell instantly in love with the shambolic song and station. It would be several years before commercial stations throughout the country would catch on and make the band a household name. I decided to see the group in concert. Not knowing any other fans of the band and not wanting to go entirely alone, I reached out to a message board and was instantly befriended by a group of Rice students, many of whom also happened to be KTRU DJs. They were intelligent and quirky and creative and basically everything I, a somewhat dorky high schooler, wanted to be. To this day, 14 years later, that group includes some of my best friends.

When it came time to go to college, I was choosing between Rice and some other schools that frankly were more affordable. But I had already met the kind of students that attend Rice, and listened frequently to the eclectic and broadening and do-it-yourself student-run radio station that called out to all of Houston: “This is what Rice is about.” I knew that Rice was the only place I could really see myself.

And that proved to be entirely true. Rice was such a welcoming environment for intelligent, different, open minded people and encouraged one and all to get involved and expand their limits. Despite having no background in theatre, I performed in and directed several plays. I never played highschool sports, but was on dozens of intramural teams. I had no background in student government, but became president of Wiess College. And I definitely had no broadcast experience, but there was KTRU, student run and operated and a place where I literally found my voice.

And that, by anecdote, is what is unique about Rice. There are a lot of good academic schools in America and in Texas, of which Rice is one. But there are no schools that I know of that encourage or even allow that kind of expansion of who you were to who you can become as a person.

That is no longer the case. With your sale of KTRU, you have signaled that the institutions that made Rice unique are for sale to the highest bidder, without notice and without paying any respect to the intelligence or hard work of the students. KTRU as a web-only presence will whither and die on the vine without the community that terrestrial radio provides, or the music and access to artists provided by record labels to FM stations. Some people came to Rice strictly because of KTRU; others came to Rice because it was the kind of school where student-driven institutions such as KTRU could exist in the first place. Nonetheless, you have determined that it was an “underutilized asset” and it has been sold off like so much chattel. It’s reasonable for any other organization on campus to wonder who may be next.

There’s little I can say about the sale of KTRU that hasn’t already been written to you more eloquently, or with more detailed analysis of why a student built and operated station run on donated equipment isn’t yours to sell, or why the secretive nature of the sale is such a betrayal of the student trust.

I write to tell you this: Given the extreme cost to attend the university (somewhere over $45,000 per year for undergrads), I can’t imagine recommending to anyone that the school is worth the price, or that it provides an environment for learning that is much different or more special than its rivals. I also can’t imagine supporting the school with donations after the callous and disrespectful way that it has sold off an institution built up by the labor of its students and donors with only the flimsiest of pretenses. If a capital campaign to fund the new serveries failed to meet its objectives, why must students pay the price?

It’s painful to write this, because I loved Rice and did all I could to shout that love from the rooftops. But the Rice that I felt that way about seems to now be gone.

Sincerely,

Joshua Katz
Wiess ‘01