Open Letter from Alumni Regarding the Sale of KTRU

8/26/10 7:00pm

Open Letter from Alumni to the Rice Community Regarding the Sale of KTRU 91.7 FMWe, the undersigned, call on President Leebron to halt the sale of the KTRU license, transmitter and frequency to the University of Houston, to preserve this cherished piece of Rice student culture, and to begin to restore the trust between the administration and the alumni.

For those of us who worked at the station, KTRU was an essential part of our undergraduate experience, and through it we have remained tied to the Rice community. KTRU was a place where we developed an appreciation for progressive music, learned responsibility in a real world environment, made lifelong friends, and found our niche on the larger Rice campus. While working at the student radio station, we developed skills in public speaking, critical thinking, and organizational leadership. Through KTRU, we became connected to the world "beyond the hedges," interacting directly with musicians, businesses, and the press in the fourth largest city in the United States. For those of us who did not work at the station, KTRU was an important part of the fabric of student life at the university, and many of us had friends who worked at KTRU, or enjoyed the station as listeners.

Student activities in general, such as Baker Shakespeare, intramural sports, and the Marching Owl Band contribute to the Rice experience in ways that shouldn't be broken down into mere financial figures. A well-rounded undergraduate education includes not only stimulating academic experiences, but also participation in extracurricular activities that provide personal enrichment and growth. Before the news about the sale reached us, we would not have believed that the university administration would calculate the worth of a student organization based on the resale value of its key operating component.

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While it is true that the Rice University administration owns the KTRU transmitter and frequency, KTRU began in 1967 as a student-initiated project, and was supported by the university with little interference for decades. In last week's Thresher, Vice President for Public Affairs Linda Thrane questioned "the fairness in tying up millions of dollars for one student activity - KTRU - when those resources could be used for a diversity of purposes that serve many more students." To clarify, Rice has not invested millions of dollars in KTRU; the commercial classical station KRTS donated the transmitter in 1991, along with an endowment to pay for operating costs, so that they could increase their wattage without interfering with KTRU's signal. In our view, the administration should appreciate KTRU as a win-win - a student-initiated and maintained organization that generated goodwill for the university across Houston at very little cost.

In an e-mail to the university community, President Leebron cited "[a] recent Arbitron report [that] showed that KTRU's audience was so small that it did not even register in the ratings." According to KTRU Station Manager Kelsey Yule, in 2009 KTRU met Arbitron's minimum reporting standard of 24,000-25,000 average weekly listeners for the year as a whole, and most recently in December 2009. This suggests that the station actually serves a large group, with KTRU averaging more listeners per week than men's football or basketball do visitors per game.

We must also respectfully disagree that an online radio station can take the place of KTRU as a broadcast station. In fact, KTRU has provided streaming audio of its programming for the past decade, in multiple formats, with no student staff or listener-generated suggestions to phase out the terrestrial broadcast. Online radio is not accessible to many Houstonians in their cars, and streaming media lacks the prominence as a media outlet that attracts students to volunteer, touring musicians to stop by for interviews, and music labels to donate the recordings that comprise the station's playlist.

Above all, we object to the closed process by which this decision was made, which did not include input from students, alumni, faculty, or staff. Although the university may legally own KTRU, we as alumni feel a deep attachment to the station, since students created it and have continued to develop it. For forty years, students have invested in KTRU, both through their labor and, over time, through student activity fees. By selling KTRU in secret, without consulting with student leadership or the KTRU Friendly Committee, the university has established a terrible precedent that should greatly concern anyone who values fair dealing, transparency, and engaging stakeholders in decision-making. The sale of KTRU in this manner would fundamentally rather than temporarily diminish our view of our alma mater.

We demand that the university make the situation right by:

• canceling the sale of the KTRU license, transmitter and frequency and then transferring ownership to a student-controlled custodian;
• holding open meetings with KTRU leaders to explore solutions; and
• putting in place a formal process to ensure fairness and transparency in the administration's dealing with all student organizations.

Julie Grob, Jones, 1988

Elio Abbondanzieri, Ph.D., Hanszen, '99

John S. Adair, Sid Rich, '89

Richard Adams, Will Rice, '04

Olivia Allison, Martel, '03

Zachary Allison, Will Rice, '01

Scott Anderson, Psychology, '92

Alexei Angelides, Lovett, '01

Paul Anzel, Will Rice, '09

Marshall Armintor, Ph.D., English, '02

Deborah Ausman, '95

Eric Avera, Will Rice, '90

Amy Averett, Lovett, '91

Booth Babcock, Brown, '94

Brendon Bailey, Baker, '02

Steven Bailey, Will Rice, '83

Rebecca Baldwin, Jones, '02

Laura Balzano, Jones, '01

Jared Banks, Will Rice, '03/'05

Stan Barber, '78

Hilary Barelas, Will Rice, '01

To see the full list of signatures, click here.

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