I came to Rice for graduate school in the fall of 1997. I was younger than most of my fellow class, and frankly, I didn’t have much in common with them anyway. So when I found out about KTRU, I applied to be a DJ, and discovered a community of like-minded students passionate about music and the creative arts. I quickly got involved in the operations of the station well beyond the basic task of DJ-ing, eventually serving as an Assistant Music Director, Operations Manager, and Hip-Hop Director.

At KTRU I grew as a person, far more than I ever had from any of my formal education. I found my voice and learned to lead by example. I discovered skills and talents I never knew I had, like taking initiative and ownership of projects and seeing them through. And KTRU provided an outlet for some of the skills and hobbies I already possessed, like fiddling with electronics. In fact, that first year I took on the responsibility of holding together much of the equipment in the station. I remember spending over 12 hours in the studio that Thanksgiving day, DJ-ing 3 shifts and spending another few hours fixing equipment with solder, tape, and whatever else I could scrounge up. I went on to organize concerts and help with live broadcasts, among other things.

President Leebron wants to continue KTRU as an internet-only affair. I say that the radio broadcast ability of KTRU is an integral part of what makes it great. As a direct result of our broadcast ability, I have met and become friends with many individuals from the music industry nationwide as well as countless individuals from Houston’s greater arts and music communities. Our position as a voice for the underexposed side of Houston culture cannot be overvalued. On a smaller scale, I have received calls from individuals who just stumbled across my radio show and were excited to hear what I had been playing. Often these people told me that they had been Houstonites for years and never turned down to our end of the dial, but for whatever reason, they did this time. This happenstance acquisition of listeners can’t happen on the internet and consequently, KTRU as an internet-only affair is a losing proposition, one that will be unable to serve the greater Houston community.

It is stunning to me the casual disregard that Rice University’s administration has for the opinion of its own students, alumni, and extended community that they would make this deal in secret, with no discussion with the group of people who would be most affected by the transaction. Do they have the legal right to sell KTRU? Probably. But I have quite literally put hundreds of hours of sweat equity into KTRU, as have many other students, and thus I feel that in some small way, I am a part owner of KTRU. To sell it off without even so much as a discussion is disgusting.

I thank Rice University for providing me with my graduate education, but should this deal stand, I will no longer contribute financially to any other program affiliated with Rice.

Dennis Lee
Ph.D. ’05, Biochemistry and Cell Biology

KTRU helped me grow up during my years at Rice – the closest I came to holding responsibilities that the ‘real world’ entailed. Sure, the music was weird, and the hours during my first year were inconvenient. But if I didn’t show up at 1am on a Saturday night for my three-hour shift, the station would not operate. That was my first lesson in personal accountability. It is a lesson that won’t be taught to other students if KTRU were to move to an online-only format.

Nirav Bhagat, 2002, Jones College

I was never a DJ, but I was often mistaken for one.  I listened to KTRU and attended their events, but what’s more, I befriended the student community that surrounded the station.  Today, I still think of my old Rice friends as KTRU-friends and non-KTRU friends.  There’s something special about its people, almost like being another Rice within Rice, a wonderful community inside a great school.  That experience, perhaps more than the music, is the thing that new students will miss out on.

John Paul Yabraian – Will Rice ’96

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

I started my time at KTRU in late 2006 and was a DJ until I left Houston in August of 2009. After “paying my dues” with an awesome graveyard shift (a time frame that introduced me to music like Maserati, Telefon Tel Aviv, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Mono, and 65daysofstatic), I found myself joining MK Ultra, hosting alongside Scott Novich and Asif Hassan for a semester before taking the reins myself for more than a year.

During my stint on that Friday night 9-12 slot, we featured guest DJs from some of Houston’s most forward-thinking clubs and parties, conducted interviews with some of the most exciting and ground-breaking producers (Axwell, 2020 Soundsystem, Tim Xavier, Charles Feelgood, Kraddy, others), and promoted home-grown tracks, recent mixes, and events that were happening in the Houston area. We gave away tickets at regular intervals; the vast majority were snapped up within seconds of announcing their availability over the air. We received letters and correspondence from avid listeners (including a few from behind bars…very interesting stuff there, and I am assuming that they were listening over the airwaves and not the internet). I always felt like we had a substantial underground following in addition to the myriad of enthusiastic callers who would request track names, Myspace pages of guest DJs, or party information almost every week.

MK Ultra introduced me to styles of electronic music that I had never heard before, including dubstep, glitch-hop, and minimal – just being in the studio when tracks or edits were debuted was a tremendous experience. I made connections with the music community that I never dreamed of, including big-name local DJ crews like Gritsy, Texas Dub, Crossroads, and DIRB!, promoters and club owners from venues such as Rich’s, Dean’s, The Flat, the now-defunct La Strada, and Bar-Rio, and booking agents/managers from major record labels like Om Recordings and Moist Music.

MK Ultra was one of my most rewarding, defining, and challenging undergraduate experiences. It took up a lot of my time along the way, but was a part of my life that I will never forget. It saddens me to think that a forward-thinking station like KTRU and its hard-working DJs have been treated in such cruel and clinical fashion by the current Rice administration.

Paul Thompson
Baker (HELL YEAH) College
Class of 2009

KTRU has and continues to be a big part of me. More superficially it allowed me to explore and engage in the community around Houston. But much more profoundly, it allowed me to challenge myself to push the boundaries of what I took music, culture and community to be and develop skills I could not build in even the most welcoming corners of my residential college.

Alyssa Ibarra
Hanszen ’10

I got to work on the KTRU News Show during the summer of 2008 and fall 2009 and it was an amazing experience! We featured the stories and expertise of Rice students and faculty as well as a wide range of Houston community members, including writers, artists, activists, and local historians. I really think KTRU has been an integral part in connecting Rice to the larger community – losing it will be a great loss to Houston and to our university’s mission to move beyond the hedges!

Gislaine Williams
Jones College 2009

As an alum, I’m outraged that Rice is considering selling KTRU and is doing it in a covert way to exclude input.

The value of KTRU is not merely in its music, as it would be at a commercial station.  It gives a greater thing to Rice students: experience in leadership.  The skills learned in running a radio station with a huge transmitter and the responsibility of FCC filings translate directly into skills needed in running a company, running a university, running a nonprofit, or running a country.  Experiences in public speaking to a large FM audience during the busy 4-7pm drive-time shift are directly applicable when addressing a union, a faculty, a staff, or voters.  Learning how to not be a fawning idiot around rock stars backstage at a concert is good training for learning how to not be a fawning idiot around nobel prize winners and CEOs.

I am now a Professor of Chemistry, and an Associate Dean for Research Activities for the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington.  Sure, my Rice physics degree taught me how to do homework problems and research.  But my leadership experiences at KTRU made me, and others, ultimately successful.  A sale of KTRU would rob future students of similar opportunities.  An internship at somebody else’s radio station is not the same.  Before geeks can take over the world, we need training in serious job skills, coupled with real responsibility.  These are on offer at KTRU and I hope they will be far into the future. If the Thresher or the RSA or any other student organization had builds up a resource, would Rice disband them as well?

Moving KTRU to an all-internet format is not viable.  Without an FM frequency and a transmitter, bands would not visit the station to play in the studio, and record companies would not send KTRU samples of new music.  KTRU’s valuable music library would stagnate and it would become an oldies station not out of choice but out of necessity.  There is no technological reason why an internet radio station cannot be as successful as an FM station, but there are huge financial reasons why not, driven by the modern music industry.

I think that it is not relevant to argue about whether any of us would play the same music as KTRU’s dj’s currently do for its rock shows, or its jazz shows (Sunday) or its blues shows (Wednesday) or its world music shows (Monday) or any of its other diverse shows (see http://ktru.org/schedule.shtml).  Sometimes we would, sometimes we wouldn’t.  My own personal taste in music has certainly evolved as I’ve grown older and more boring.

Most importantly, Rice students created KTRU from scratch, and continued to put time and effort into it for over 40 years, as a gift for future students.  If we had meant for that extraordinary resource to be used to buy a kitchen, we would have simply given to the general fund.  In fact, a lot of us KTRU alums have indeed given to the general fund because of our close ties to Rice through KTRU, but we won’t donate anymore if the sale goes through.  At this moment, the Facebook site called “Rice Alums Pledging to not Donate if KTRU is Sold” has over 100 members.  My loyalty to Rice is first and foremost through my loyalty to KTRU; whenever another alum asks which college I was in, I always say “KTRU”.

I particularly admire the thoughtful, well-written letter by Daniel Mee at http://www.nonalignmentpact.com/2010/08/an-open-letter-to-rice-university-president-david-leebron.html/comment-page-1#comment-14878. Ideas on how to help oppose the sale of KTRU are at savektru.org.

Sarah L. Keller, Ph.D.

Rice B.A. Physics ‘89

Listen to Amalia and Rory (children of alumni Rachel Dornhelm and Andy Campbell) make a plea for us to save KTRU.

Amalia: Save KTRU

Rory: Save KTRU

I was a KTRU DJ from 1996-2003, Music Librarian from 1997-1999, and Station Manager from 1999-2000.

I was actually planning on dropping out of Rice before I got involved with KTRU. Instead of dropping out, I had the opportunity to learn firsthand how to oversee the day-to-day operations of a 50,000 watt non-commercial/educational radio station, with an effective listening radius of 50 miles in the 4th largest city in the United States. I learned how to manage an organizational budget of $18,000, and how to lead and train a diverse staff comprising over 100 student and community volunteers. I learned what the FCC requires of radio stations and why, and how to meet those requirements. I learned how to communicate effectively and diplomatically with different stakeholders (DJ’s, University administrators, A&R reps, news media, the general public) to pursue the station’s mission and reach long-term goals, and how to work closely with others to organize/promote well-attended concerts for highly respected local and touring artists.

In fact, my experiences learning this last lesson are some of my proudest moments so far. In my wallet, I still keep a ticket from the KTRU-sponsored Negativland concert on the Rice campus in 2000, a concert which I co-organized and which sold out *all* 1800 seats of Hamman Hall. For months, my best friends and I worked our hearts out for this show: everything from driving all day to distribute posters, to puzzling over which fancy lights/equipment we should rent, to drinking a case of Pepsi (per the rider, no joke), to praying the band wouldn’t blow all of the building’s fuses for a third time in 15 minutes, to cleaning up the theater on our hands and knees. It was probably the hardest I had ever worked, the most responsibility I had ever had, and one of the best times of my life.

At this point you may be thinking, “Well, that is great and all, but why should this matter to Rice now?”

Perhaps you’ve noticed that I haven’t really even mentioned the music on KTRU. This is not because my music education as a DJ was insignificant– it was amazingly broad and deep, and what I learned as a DJ made my life richer and my time on this planet infinitely more enjoyable. What I want to emphasize, though, is that the loss of KTRU’s frequency, license, and transmitter represents a profound loss of opportunity and responsibility for the students of Rice University. This loss cannot be remedied by an internet station for a variety of reasons.

No frequency means no reporting to CMJ and other music journals (no new CD’s). No frequency means no real chance for promotion (no way to attract bands and fund concerts). No frequency means that students will never get a chance to accomplish and learn amazing things through radio, and be so delighted and encouraged by their successful risk-taking that they really have no choice but to try and ultimately succeed again. This alternative is what Rice University and President Leebron are choosing by selling KTRU. I simply cannot understand or endorse this. I will not provide any spoken, much less financial, encouragement for an institution which actively (and secretly) seeks to deny its students the kinds of opportunities for success that KTRU provides.

Meg Smith

I am currently in Ecuador on a Watson Fellowship, which is a year abroad working on an independent, non-academic project. Mine is creating an audio podcast about nature. Last year I also received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (funding for grad school), so I’m faced with the nice position of trying to decide which of the top ecology graduate school programs I want to attend next fall. My experience at KTRU was absolutely integral to these current and future successes. Through its unique spirit and the amazing friendships I formed at the station, it has also hugely influenced my personality, but that’s too intangible and profound to address in an email.

As I’ve written in so many personal statements and essays, I had absolutely no experience with radio, journalism, or student leadership going into my sophomore year. Yet when I approached KTRU to ask if I could interview professors about their research, I was immediately appointed News Director, and learned about all of these things on the fly. I started a weekly show that, granted, was pretty terrible. But after three years of steady improvement it was something I was very proud of; see <http://eat-the-crayon.tumblr.com>. And not only had I learned the specialized skills of a radio reporter, but I also learned how to create something from the ground up, how to manage people (I was also co-DJ Director senior year), and how to communicate (for a future scientist, this is a rare skill). I also gained the self-confidence that comes along with those lessons. My receipt of the Watson is a direct product of my experience at KTRU in too many ways to name, and those experiences definitely supplemented my research accomplishments to allow me to receive the NSF.

Neither leadership nor journalism are unique to KTRU, but there was an incredible amount of responsibility in the hands of students who, for a few hours each week, controlled 50,000 watts of radio power, and for a student like me who was in charge of all the DJs, that responsibility was much higher. Few student organizations have such a tangible, constant, and obvious connection to the world outside the hedges, and the fact that music was the point of that connection does not diminish its power. That awesome responsibility has now disappeared. “Internet radio” is not radio; if it were, then why can’t KUHF save themselves the money and broadcast classical music online? How is it sensible for them to want another tower and nonsensical for us to say that internet radio isn’t the same?

Despite what the Rice official media department says, an online-only KTRU will be a mere shadow of its former self. I can tell you with 100% certainty that my work at KTRU has made me who I am today, and I truly believe that experiences as profoundly life-changing as mine won’t happen with the new KTRU, because the responsibility that we held as leaders of a powerful radio station is gone. Out of all the reasons that the sale of the station upsets me, this is what I mourn the most. It probably goes without saying that I will never make a donation to Rice, which saddens me a great deal because my experience there was so excellent.

Rice: good luck profoundly changing students’ lives with a new servery.

Sincerely,
Carina Baskett
2010
Martel College
News Director 2007-2010, DJ Director 2009-2010

PS: One time a guy called during my shift and told me that KTRU saved his life. “Twenty years ago I was driving around and thinking about killing myself. I was flipping around the dial and came across Walking On The Moon by The Police. No one else was playing that kind of thing back then, and I was totally blown away. I decided not to kill myself.”

I worked at KTRU for 5 years (4 as undergrad and one as a community volunteer). This station was a huge part of the reason that I had a successful experience at Rice. I developed leadership, communication, and volunteering skills. I delved deeply into alternative music and made friendships that are still strong and thriving. KTRU was a huge part of my experience at Rice even though I was a biology and environmental science major and have worked in my field ever since I graduated.

KTRU was my home away from home. It was the reason I stayed in college, the reason I was able to thrive on the small campus in the middle of Houston. KTRU gave me a voice, a purpose, a place where I belonged, where I was valued. The university is being very shortsighted in the sale of the station. I can’t imagine 9.5 million makes a big of difference overall. Not when you alienate a whole segment of the student population who was active and involved with the station for the past 40 years.

Rice students are often viewed by the broader community as being cloistered behind the hedges. KTRU on the FM dial is one way that students have been able to reach out beyond the hedges. KTRU reaches out to the music lovers all over the Houston area and provides a critical media outlet for independent, underheard music in a big market. I am deeply disappointed in the school administration’s secret handling of the entire matter.

Julie Wroble
Hanszen ‘89
KTRU DJ ’85-‘90
Promotions Director, Assistance Music Director, and Music Director

In the big picture, it would hardly have mattered if she hadn’t been, but the fact that the beautiful girl who became my wife had been a KTRU DJ was one of many special charms that made her attractive.

Jerry Fowler
Computer Science Ph.D. 1995

I was notified of this issue via a friend who lives in Houston. I never have been to Rice University but in 1998, I was involved in a very similar issue with UNLV’s radio station.

Basically, UNLV felt that the student station, which was totally independent of UNLV’s budget, was not in keeping with the image of the university. And UNLV demanded a format change to their traditional programming of indie, jazz and variety, to a mostly all jazz format. This caused Student Government to withdraw funding after nearly 20 years. UNLV made similar claims of lack of listeners and that the station would become a money making tool for UNLV.

The students and community members who DJed the evening and overnight spots were barred from KUNV and replaced with an NPR satellite feed of jazz.

Ultimately the students, community and UNLV Administration fervently argued over issue in front of the stations licensee, the Nevada Board of Regents, through 2002. In the short term, the student side of the debate all but won. However with no one willing to enforce a “re-change” of format, UNLV had the upper hand, in the form of time and attrition. The station remained as is… It never became a money making tool for the university. In fact it was quite the opposite.

The passion and quality of Rice Alums likely gives you better leverage than we had with ours. I really hope KTRU doesn’t become another college radio statistic. You guys where given as an example of “the way things ought to be” during our fight with UNLV.

Donald Hickey

I just read the news that the Rice University Board is considering selling KTRU’s FCC license to NPR.  This is sad and disturbing news, to say the least.  I was the the News Editor and Managing Editor of the Rice Thresher for couple of years during the 1980s.  At that time, the Thresher and KTRU were separated by a flight of stairs in the old RMC, and there was a great deal of overlap between the two staffs.  Back in the day, before the advent of newspapers being laid out on computer screens, we at the Thresher pulled an all-nighter once a week putting the paper to bed by hand.  Our station of choice at 3:00 a.m., of course, was KTRU, and much of the music I still listen to today is music that I first heard coming over a static-filled radio speaker in the middle of the night while wielding an exacto-knife.  Whenever I am back in Houston, one of the first things I do is set the radio dial to 91.7.

Although I am a huge NPR fan, and I can certainly understand why a city the size of Houston would like to have more than one NPR station, this would be a short-sighted choice for the University.  Rice’s strength has always been its commitment to undergraduate education.  Student-run entities, such as KTRU and the Thresher, are a bigger part of that education than many realize.  True, I didn’t go into journalism after working on the Thresher.  I became a criminal trial lawyer, a civil libertarian, and small business owner, instead. But the lessons I learned helping to run that organization have stayed with me my entire adult life, just as much as anything I ever learned in an undergraduate classroom.  I’m sure that if you spoke to any former KTRU managers, they would tell you the same thing.

To Rice’s Board and NPR I would say that there’s got to be a better way.  Surely, NPR can’t be serious about promoting the public good if they are prepared to kill independent, educational radio in order to do it.  Surely, the University can find another way to shore up its endowment that doesn’t involve diluting the undergraduate experience that its endowment is there to support.

Rather than cutting KTRU back, the University should consider supporting it more.  Then again, maybe it’s been the University’s benign neglect over the years that has made KTRU such an eclectic, interesting station:  give a bunch of smart, creative kids some broadcasting equipment, leave them alone, and wait to see what happens.  What did happen is that some great radio was created and some young lives were changed at 3:00 a.m.

–W. David Friesenhahn
The W. David Friesenhahn Law Firm, PLLC
New Braunfels & Seguin, Texas
www.friesenhahnlaw.com
wdf1@wireweb.net
Lovett College
Class of 1986
Rice Thresher 1983-86