A Lesson for Protesters

Much of the interesting discourse on campus centers on how students can best get Harvard administrators to meet particular goals. Some creative efforts have included bakery confections delivered to Massachusetts Hall and revisionist Christmas fables. Further down the Red Line, Tufts students decided to occupy a university building for 34 hours to push an anti-discrimination agenda.

Despite the attention given to student-administration conflicts, however, little attention has been paid here to a shocking development just several weeks ago, when Rice University temporarily shut down KTRU, its student-run radio station. The ordeal revealed how little power--or even moral suasion--university students really can exert.

Rice has in its radio station, KTRU, possibly the most archetypical "college radio" station in the country. Unlike Harvard's student-run WHRB, which plays commercials and follows a structured, fixed format, KTRU plays an eclectic mix of punk, ska, underground hip-hop, world music and several other genres. Like WHRB, KTRU is housed in university space and puts the university name on its letterhead. Unlike at Harvard, however, Rice undergraduates fund the station directly. KTRU also allows anyone to apply for a DJ position, although students receive a preference.

Conceptions of the station's identity cleaved on the issue of representation: university suits saw the station as fundamentally responsible to its (material) supporters, while DJs saw the station answering to its listeners. In 1996, aiming to gain the upper hand in this conflict, Rice University formed a committee of faculty and students to examine KTRU's role as an "asset to the university." KTRU members bristled, fearing the loss of their programming autonomy. The committee's eventual report recommended that KTRU should add several new types of programming, including interviews with faculty, recordings of visiting speakers and, especially, more coverage of Rice athletics.

Serious troubles started this past fall semester when Rice's Athletics Director asked that KTRU double the number of baseball and women's basketball games it broadcasts. The Advisory Committee eventually decided on a formula halfway between the status quo and the proposal. Simultaneously, two Rice DJs lodged a public protest. The two arrived for their punk-ska shift on one day in late November and discovered that a women's basketball game had not yet ended. Angry, the two decided to broadcast their show right over the basketball broadcast stream.

The next day, the Rice vice president for student affairs decided to shut down KTRU. He had locks placed on the doors, disabled the KTRU website and instructed that an outside network's programming be played indefinitely. Malcolm Gillis, president of Rice University, defended the decision, pointing out that KTRU's FCC license agreement stipulates that the university president is entitled to "continuous supervision of the broadcasting."

Student protests and rallies followed all week. About 140 people lined up outside Gillis' house with KTRU bumper stickers covering their mouths. Rice's Student Association, in a moment of grandeur, condemned the shutdown and invoked a "clear line of authority from the Student Association Senate to KTRU." To all this bluster, the administration expressed, they said, "no strong reaction."

KTRU finally returned to the airwaves on Dec. 8th after KTRU members, the Student Senate and Camacho reached an agreement on a new operating policy. The treaty nominally recognizes KTRU as a "student-run radio station" but acknowledges its accountability to the university. The deal also meets most of the athletic department's demands and provides that the KTRU station manager (a student) should be elected by all Rice undergraduates, since they fund the station. In essence, KTRU members lost the game.

Now, I am not trying to warn that the gnarled, calloused hand of Mr. Prudent Harvard Administrator will soon bring the same penalty upon WHRB for some trumped-up violation. I believe that WHRB long has struck a responsible balance, between its various stakeholders and the administration, that has been most helpful to it. The important message here is that in conflict, university administrators wield power and students do not. By themselves, students represent a creative and energetic but ultimately weak group for achieving goals.

That sounds obvious, but the Undergraduate Council, the Living Wage Campaign, Right to Life and dozens of other groups that press for particular ends apparently do not always realize that success isn't just a matter of turning up the heat. Unfortunately, administrators will do whatever they want unless they are shown why an alternative goal serves the university better. The KTRU DJs failed to convince Rice why the university is better off with the "mutant hardcore flower hour" on the air than a basketball game.

Sameer Doshi '02 is an Environmental Science and Public Policy concentrator in Lowell House. He is a former News Director of WHRB.