WHRB Denies Request for Chicano-Oriented Program; Afro Group Petitions FCC

Members of an Afro-American Studies class have complained in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission that racism in programming led WHRB to refuse to air a student-planned program.

Regelio Reyes, instructor in Afro-American Studies, and his students in AAS 105a have asked the FCC and President Pusey to take action on their charges.

Reyes approached WHRB early in November with a proposal for the Spanish language program. The format was to consist of news, music and discussions of the problems of Chicanos and Puerto Ricans.

WHRB initially favored the proposal, according to Reyes. However, after a series of meetings the station's Administrative Board "... used evasive rules to reject the program. Except for matters of minor details that could have been worked out in the process of preparing the program, no substantial objection was raised to it except that its being in Spanish closed it to regular monitoring," the letter said.

However, Michael F. Kraley '71, president of WHRB, said, "We decided not to run the program for one technical reason: we are required to monitor everything that goes out over the air. We have no one who speaks Spanish fluently enough to adequately monitor the program."

If the FCC judges the complaint to be valid, a formal hearing may be held, or action might be put off until WHRB's license comes up for renewal. As of last night WHRB had heard nothing from the FCC.

Pusey has asked Dean Epps to look into the matter. "Negotiations are to take place," Kraley said, "and this whole thing may resolve itself."