President David Leebron responds to Thresher staff editorial, student and alumni concerns over KTRU sale

By Seth Brown     8/26/10 7:00pm

In response to last week's staff editorial ("KTRU sale dealings ominous for all student organizations," Aug. 20), President David Leebron invited members of the Thresher editorial staff to discuss the sale of KTRU's transmission tower, broadcasting license and equipment.

The Sale

Leebron said the initial discussion came about as a result of the obligation of the administration to know the value of the university's assets.

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"There's a widespread consensus that the value of broadcasting licenses and the engagement of people with FM as a way to access their music is declining, and we certainly see that in our own student body," Leebron said. "It is not fulfilling our responsibility to wait until the asset has no value suddenly - or very little value - and to decide to sell."

KTRU's bid to raise its blanket tax last semester from $5.50 to $7.50 failed to achieve the two-thirds majority vote required to pass, as only 55 percent voted in favor of the amendment. Leebron said that rather than informing the decision to sell the station, however, this merely confirmed the impressions of the individuals dealing with the sale. He also said that although the need for funds for East Servery was a contributing factor in the sale, it was not the driving factor.

"We went through a long period in which the endowment was just growing and growing, so we could then start taking more out of the endowment and do more things - we could say yes to a lot of things because we had a growing pool of resources," Leebron said. "It wasn't about 'gee, we need the money to plug some other hole,' and I think what you'll see is when we sit down with the students and others to formulate how we're going to use this, it's really about creating new opportunities."

Leebron said the ideal solution would have been a return to KTRU's signal strength from before the station acquired the 50,000-watt tower, but this was not possible because the particular license necessary is not being given out by the FCC anymore. He said that claims that Rice sold its broadcasting license for much less than it was worth were inaccurate because they failed to take into account the fact that it was a non-commercial license.

"I think we felt we had most of the information we needed, in terms of how many listeners, how many students involved on campus, what the asset was worth," Leebron said. "This isn't the same thing as acquiring a medical school."

Though some may protest universities thinking like businesses, Leebron said it is necessary whenever resources are scarce.

"People will somehow believe about universities that there's no limit to the resources, particularly when you have an endowment of close to $4 billion, but the truth is we are making hard choices every day about how those resources are going to be applied."

Confidentiality

Leebron said the university often sells real estate, and that although he recognizes that the KTRU assets being sold are not real estate, they are similar in that both demand confidentiality.

"You talk to anybody in business and they'll tell you about the importance of confidentiality in executing a transaction like this," Leebron said. "Not to say the university is the same as a business - but people who say you should never behave like a business have no clue what the complexity of the university is about. We are all the time acting like an enterprise. We're not driven by the same values - we're driven by very different values."

Leebron said that although the way the decision was made ran contrary to Rice culture, he said it would occasionally be necessary to proceed confidentially.

"Somebody says, 'if you couldn't do it without confidentiality, you shouldn't have done it;' that's nonsense," Leebron said. "It doesn't reflect the world that we live in."

'Unilateral' Action

The editorial said that "the administration can and will act unilaterally to make an existential decision on students' behalf without consultation."

Leebron responded that he believes the university has historically been good about seeking student opinion, citing student input on the location and size of the new colleges and in searches for employees to fill empty positions. He added that the burden of deciding when consulting students in decision-making was the administration's.

"We believe the evidence supports our position that this was an exception," Leebron said. "I understand the outcry on that, but I also think people have to understand the uniqueness of the situation."

Coffeehouse and Brochstein

In the editorial, one example given to support the idea that the editorial staff of the Thresher "no longer see these actions as one-time exceptions or uncharacteristic actions" was the lack of consideration for Coffeehouse's proposal to move into Brochstein Pavilion.

According to Leebron, the fact that Coffeehouse was forbidden to make a bid on the Pavilion was the result of an attempt to protect student alcohol privileges on campus.

"What drove it in the end was what we perceived as the risk of trying to get another license to provide alcohol on the campus that was going to be delivered by students," Leebron said. "So part of this was an effort to protect what we have, which is Willy's [Pub] and Valhalla."

He said that although he could have heard the bid without the intention of actually considering it, he did not want to fake consideration of student input on an issue where it would not change the decision made by the administration.

"When we've had big discussions about things, we've had them because we genuinely wanted student input," Leebron said.

The Announcement

The staff editorial said that "the timing of this announcement came as an insult to many," and noted that most students were either not on campus or busy with O-Week.

The timing of the announcement was not intended by the administration, nor was it entirely within the administration's control, Leebron said. He said he had hoped to make the announcement in the spring, but complications with the sale meant that it was not complete at that time. The timing also depended on the timing of the meeting of University of Houston's Board of Regents, he said.

"I don't think I could have had much worse timing - is this my choice of how to begin a semester?" Leebron asked. "The notion that this would be my choice of timing is ridiculous."

Houston

The staff editorial noted that "the most noticeable change will be the loss of KTRU as an entity in the Houston community."

Leebron said that the removal of the station does not signify the abandonment of the Vision for the Second Century's call for outreach to the greater Houston community.

"We're out there more than we have ever been before, and I think people have to ask the question: 'How effective was it?' when most of the people we encountered never listened to KTRU, never heard of it," Leebron said. "It's kind of a logical fallacy that every time you stop doing something that is related to the engagement with Houston you've abandoned your commitment to it."

The Future

Leebron said that a few small details remain to be resolved before the deal is finalized. He said that although he does not yet know when KUHC will be given control of the transmitter, he plans to talk to KTRU before he speaks to the press about when the change will be made, and that it is important that KTRU's needs are met in the future.

"Going forward, we're going to try to be as collaborative with the KTRU folks as possible," Leebron said. "Obviously, they have a deep disagreement with the decision that was made, but we want to have a chance to talk with the KTRU folks about those issues."

Although Senior Director of News and Media Relations B.J. Almond said $4 million of the $9.5 million which the university will receive from the sale will go toward the completion of East Servery, the uses for the remainder will be determined with a great deal of student input, Leebron said.

"We will have a conversation with the students and involve them in how a good portion of these resources are allocated," Leebron said. "None of these decisions have been made. Our responsibility is to make sure those resources are used to maximize the benefit to our student population."

For other student organizations, Leebron said that the sale of KTRU's tower and license should not cause worry because no other student organization is using an asset of the same value.

"Where else is a student organization sitting on a $10 million resource that quite clearly doesn't belong to them?" Leebron asked. "It was quite clear that the university owned the resource and that if it increased too much in value, this might be one of the outcomes."

Leebron said that although he expects a significant portion of the money received in the deal to be used to enhance existing activities on campus, if the students just ask for something like the renewed delivery of The New York Times to the colleges, the administration will listen to them.

"It is important to us that our students have a range of media and related kinds of activities to engage in. The question is whether you put the entire bet on media activities down - $10 million on one student activity - and whether the performance of that activity had justified placing your entire bet on that.

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