We wish to address here the spin, omission and misrepresentations of President Bennet’s article on WESU, from last Friday’s issue.
1. Bennet correctly identifies several issues of concern (safety, FCC regulations, lack of oversight) that the WESU board brought to him last spring. We all, we think, know and believe that changes need to take place at WESU. However, the administration itself has ensured that these problems would arise by not creating or funding a professional managerial position for years. They have, essentially, allowed for an orchestra without a conductor. Every other major university station in Connecticut has some sort of professional managerial position.
2. Bennet tries to sound like he is making these changes in the wider community’s interest, at the same time he is pushing the community broadcasters out the door. The new schedule would give original (i.e. studio-based) production less than 12 hours a day; most likely, these spaces will all be filled by students. Do we need to mention, also, that these hours would be from 5 p.m. to 6 a.m.? Does anyone really pretend that there is a sizeable radio audience after, say, 1 a.m.? In reality, locally produced programs would have from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m.—that’s 8 hours/day. The bottom line is that programs that reach out to Middletown—especially its ethnic (West Indian, Italian, Hispanic) communities—would be eliminated. “Community radio,” in Bennet’s newspeak Wespeak, is radio without any community at all.
3. Bennet cannot seriously say that NPR is serving the community at the same time he eliminates its involvement. Furthermore, as is obvious from any search on the FM dial, NPR is already serving this community on multiple different frequencies around the state. Redundancy—never can get enough of it!
4. It should be observed that Bennet is walking over us in making this decision. It would be totally incorrect to get the impression that he came up with the NPR idea and brought it to students to seriously get their input on it. Rather, he made the decision to change, then brought it to students to hear about what they’d say to it. This is called Wesleyan’s public relations; make authoritarian decisions, then open a space for “dialogue” that you studiously ignore. Flashback to the chalking forums. As the Argus editorial points out, no one really can consider Bennet’s one-week provision to find alternative solutions as a serious gesture.
5. Most importantly, as Jesse Sommer points out in Tuesday’s article, the administration is breaking its agreement with the WESU board and by extension students; the handover of the WESU FCC license made a few years ago was contingent upon allowing the WESU board to retain autonomy over programming decisions.
It is imperative that students, community members, and alumni fight this move. We can, if we work together, and draw upon lessons from the past (the “Independent Ivy” debacle). We can, at the very least, find better ways to solve WESU’s problems.
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