… I realized that there was a specific, if unstated, reasoning behind the KTRU aesthetic. And that is, that all types of music are of equal value and deserve representation on the radio, and that KTRU exists to provide that representation.

… the DJ recognizes that there are many different types of music in the world, and an innumerable number of musical works, most of which are completely unrepresented on the FM radio dial, or even on satellite radio or Internet radio. KTRU is one of only a handful of stations in the entire United States that make any attempt at all to even approximate the diversity of recorded music that exists.

… part of the reason that KTRU supporters … are so passionate about the station is its explicit and uncompromising valuation of art for its own sake. As consumers, as citizens, as workers, nearly everything we do in modern America to interact with the world is governed by the logic of the marketplace, which, even in the age of the “long tail,” necessarily favors the bland, the moderate, and the generalistic. By contrast, KTRU operates according to the logic of aesthetic experience, which favors the idiosyncratic and the radical, and acknowledges the multiplicity of feeling and opinion. To shelter and insulate this type of thinking, which rarely survives exposure to the marketplace, should be among the highest missions of an institute of education. Nobody else can take it up on any kind of scale. For an institute like Rice to abdicate that responsibility so nakedly- quite frankly, it just tears me apart.

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