KTRU in part always genuinely embodied the spirit of Rice – the spirit that drew me there in the first place.  A desire for experimentation, for learning, for pushing the boundaries and opening my previously narrow world into something new.  For doing things a different way, and an ethical way.  As Rice had no fraternities to gunk up the works and kept tuition (relatively speaking) low, KTRU took as its mission to play the music you wouldn’t hear anywhere else, instead of playing the same old songs that were on big radio.  As much as we might love Nirvana (back in my day, anyway), we didn’t need to play “Smell Like Teen Spirit” any more than it already got played on the radio elsewhere.  This was not just an interesting mission but an ethical one.

I think I learned as much in my days in KTRU as I did in many classes – not just about music, although that learning was eye-opening and still affects me almost daily – but about being open to new things and new people, about working with people, about connecting with a broader community at large.  Despite the administration’s insistence that nobody listens to KTRU, it mattered to have an audience, no matter how small, even if it was only that one guy who called in for a request, or that one woman who called in to ask “What was that you just played?”  I loved my time at Rice in total; but KTRU was certainly a big part of that.

And it was the very physical status of KTRU as an entity in the airwaves that made it special.  The way you could latch onto it from many parts of Houston and beyond, as we explored that massive, strange, wonderful city, crammed into friends’ cars.  The calls I received during my 4 am shift from workers getting up, or going to sleep, or people living in small towns outside of Houston that wondered what unusual song I had just played.  While the internet presence of KTRU may be useful to some, many in the community do not have access to that, as streaming internet radio has yet to be implemented in most cars, factories, and even many offices where such streaming is restricted.  There is no substitute for radio, even in an ipod age.

Personally, I’ll never forget that feeling having an amazing shift, or playing terrific and terrible music, of hearing something new and amazing for the first time, and then of leaving the station on a dark Sunday morning at 7 am, into a cool, soupy, pre-sunset moment, the smell of Houston’s industrial work in the air, the campus quiet, walking back to my dorm, tired but feeling amazing.

Part of my anger at the situation is the way that it was handled.  Had the student body, or their chosen representatives, or particularly the KTRU staff, been included in these decisions, it might be a different story.  Things change, and if the Rice student body and the Houston community truly do not want KTRU any more than I cannot argue with that.  But for this to be imposed from above is extremely disappointing.  And the manner in which it was executed, in the middle of the summer, while the student body was absent, is highly problematic.  An action like this, a swift removal from above without consulting the people to whom this station really mattered in fact suggests that Rice is no longer the place I attended and still think so fondly of.

Sincerely,
Jeff Ostergren
Hanszen 1998