In a period of just under two weeks in August, Houston, Texas, lost its eclectically-programmed college radio station and 75% of its dedicated arthouse screens.

Austin’s venerable Alamo Drafthouse chain runs just two small theaters on the outskirts of Houston while cheap Alamo knockoffs Studio Movie Grill and The Movie Tavern have proliferated throughout the city. Maybe the Houston Angelika’s downtown location, with its confusing parking situation, wasn’t the best place for an arthouse. But a region with over 5 million people should easily be able to support more than three independently-oriented movie screens. And to have the city’s two major universities conspire to effectively shut down their one college radio station borders on the unconscionable.

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It’s only too bad that we weren’t quite fast enough to pass the tax last year – but then again, it seems very unlikely that winning two-thirds of the vote would have changed anything about the sale, considering the administrators’ blatant disregard of student opinion when they can get away with it. They are, after all, “all the time acting like an enterprise,” as Leebron said, and student input apparently weighs very little in the scales of business. Please prevent the administration from getting away with this sale, for even if KTRU means nothing to you, the next atrocity might hit closer to your heart – visit www.savektru.org to see what you can do to help.

Carina Baskett
Martel ’10
former KTRU DJ director

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Faculty, students and alumni from both sides are outraged at both UH and Rice administration’s secrecy. Since the news broke on Aug. 17, Rice students and KTRU supporters have risen up in protest with rallies, meetings and petitions. Now some of UH is stepping up to show the administrations that Rice students aren’t the only ones opposed to the sale.

A group of UH alumni and students have created their own online petition specifically targeting President Renu Khator and the UH administration for their involvement in the “secret deal” to buy KTRU.

In the petition it states, “by voting to authorize the purchase of KTRU without informing students or the general public prior to the vote, we believe that the UH Board of Regents failed in its responsibility as the governing body of a public institution to keep the community informed of important University decisions.”

UH and Rice alumni have voiced their intent to cut funding to the universities if the deal goes through.

“I love public radio, but Houston needs the diversity of KTRU,” Christopher Spadone wrote on the petition’s website.

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In 1967, students at Rice University set up a two-watt radio station, broadcasting news, music and covering notable local events. Over the past forty-three years, the station has grown to a 50,000-watt powerhouse, a model for college programmers everywhere, and the greater Houston area’s alternative to the Clear Channel, Z-Rock, Power Country wasteland that is American radio today.

The station was built by the students, was grown by the students and is maintained by the students and a large community of supportive listeners throughout the Houston area.

… university president David Leebron entered secret negotiations to sell the station’s broadcasting license and frequency to the University of Houston, which would relegate KTRU to internet-only status. But Rice students and fans of radio diversity are having none of it.

Students have organized a strong effort to block the sale of the license. They are supported not only by the larger community, but even students at the University of Houston, who like KTRU’s eclectic programming just the way it is.

In an era where culture is dictated and airwave diversity is shrinking, please help maintain this bastion of aural freedom.

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I am a proud alum because Rice University is not like any other school. Rice attracts some of the most intelligent, capable, mature and well-rounded people in the world. By excluding them from the KTRU decision-making process, President Leebron and the board have communicated to all of us that they don’t trust the students to be discrete, mature and adult. If we cannot trust Leebron and the administration to understand this on relatively small issues like what to do about KTRU, why should we trust him to make the larger decisions affecting the larger Rice community we care so much about?

Doug Farry is a former Will Rice College president (’92).

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This week’s Student Association meeting introduced a resolution entitled “To Disapprove of the Secretive Process Employed During the sale of KTRU-FM; To call for a Collaborative Dialogue between Student Stakeholders and the Rice Administration” (see story, page 11). … [T]he SA’s support of student organizations is commendable. Though they are understandably powerless to take any action stronger than passing a non-binding resolution, their demand that “the Rice administration provide a concrete assurance … that the decision to confidentially appraise and sell KTRU-FM was indeed not a precedent” properly engages decision-makers to come to the table and share future plans with the student body. In a place where institutional memories rarely reach back further than four years, it is important that the administration carve in stone their commitment to students.

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“We’re really disappointed,” Yang said. “So many students came out with questions for the administration, and they weren’t here to answer them.” Director of National Media Relations David Ruth said that instead of attending the forum, Rice administrators will continue to meet with KTRU and various student leaders about their concerns and future opportunities. Yang and KTRU Music Director Kevin Bush were seated at the front of the auditorium alongside two empty chairs that were marked for “Administration Representative[s].”

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Rice University is in the process of selling its student-run radio station for nearly $10 million, drawing protests from students and listeners. … No one at the station was told about the sale until 12 hours before the University of Houston Board of Regents voted to approve it, said Program Director Joey Yang.

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“Although the station manager Joey Yang was mediating the discussion and answering questions, there were simply two empty chairs next to him with nameplates labeled ‘Administration Representative’ next to him for the entire hour. Early in the meeting Yang apologized for the lack of presence, saying, ‘Thank you all for showing up, and I apologize if you wanted to be heard.'”

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Check out photos from Saturday’s concert here >

To be released November 1, 2010:

Rice President David Leebron announced today that the Rice Board of Trustees has approved a long-term lease of Recking Park to West University Little League for $10 million, beginning in 2012. Rice will discontinue its Division 1 baseball program.

“Many at Rice have enjoyed our baseball program, but in these challenging economic times, we must make hard decisions. The baseball program was outside our core mission as a university. Other universities do quite well without baseball programs. SMU discontinued its baseball program many years ago.”

Rice plans to use the $10 million to improve faculty parking and on-campus dining options for students and staff. Rice was unable to allocate even 1 per cent from the $1 billion capital fund campaign currently underway for these needed improvements, or support them through user fees.

President Leebron explained, “Our recent experience with the sale of KTRU’s transmitter and license led us to look for additional opportunities to liquidate underutilized assets, and leasing Reckling Park and discontinuing the baseball program compared favorably to the KTRU transaction. In fact, we wondered why we didn’t think of it first.”

KTRU was created by students, and operated almost entirely with a volunteer student staff, plus one paid administrator. In contrast, Rice had baseball for purely historical reasons, and had to support it with scholarships for athletes, 3 full-time paid coaches, plus much administrative staff.

KTRU cost Rice nothing to operate. The baseball program had significant operating costs beyond salaries.

As for the impact on the Rice community and the city at large, Leebron pointed out, “KTRU reached thousands of Houstonians every single day. The baseball team played typically less than 60 dates a year, only half of them at Reckling Park, and typically before crowds of only a couple of thousand fans. And it was always underutilized in terms of making an impact on the community. It rarely received more than a few column inches of coverage in the back pages of the Houston Chronicle sports section. Most students were indifferent to the games; rarely more than 100 of them attended a single game. Now seemed the right time to lease the stadium, as baseball is suffering from competition with video games and the internet as entertainment, particularly among young adults. Our alumni can always go watch the Astros, which occasionally employ former Rice baseball players.”

The Board of West University Little League expressed its great pleasure in acquiring the lease. “We are getting a first-rate facility that we can use almost year round. We will be able to better accommodate the over 1,200 children who play baseball in our program with this facility, forty times the number of baseball players at Rice.”

President Leebron noted, “I regret that we had to negotiate this deal in secret. I know it will irritate longtime fans of the Rice baseball program who were not given an opportunity to express their views on the wisdom of this decision. But frankly, we determined there just aren’t that many of them. And with the sale of KTRU, we couldn’t even broadcast the baseball games to those fans. Small as the number of fans may be, we knew that if they were allowed to express their views, the sale might not go through.”

(As you may have guessed, this is a parody). Original source »

“Classical music fans in the city’s southern and western suburbs may not be able to hear the station intended to serve their interests.”

“‘It’s all static,’ Clear Lake resident Jay Bennett said of the radio signal that would be designated for classical music and arts programming if the deal goes through. ‘It seems odd that they would degrade their (classical music) signal and alienate a lot of their listeners.'”

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“The last time student, or community, input was gathered in earnest was during the Call to Conversation in 2005: Two years before any current undergraduate student had even matriculated. The truth is that the desires of the students have been consistently overlooked in favor of decisions aimed at increasing Rice’s visibility and profit. It looks more and more like the Vision for the Second Century is about benefits at the end of the second century than the beginning.”

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“Even though it’s true that KTRU will be broadcasting via the Internet regardless of the outcome it’s the actual radio transmission that allows the station to bring in new listeners. Everyone knows that KTRU won’t be completely dissolved but that doesn’t matter. Once the station loses its frequency it just becomes another one of the endless rabble of online radio stations. Albeit it will still function as an excellent online radio station, there’s no way one can accidentally discover a streamed station the same way one can on the FM dial. The tower and frequency are integral to the spirit of the station and its local nature.”

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