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U.S. Mail:
The Rice Thresher
6100 Main Street (MS-524)
Houston, TX 77005-1892

We are writing in response to the report of the KTRU committee [released last weekend], in part to dispel fears that control of the radio station is being taken out of student hands. KTRU is not being taken over by the administration. The report's substantial changes should be understood in the context of KTRU's goals. Unfortunately, KTRU's goals are not fully understood among the Rice community, largely because of a lack of communication on our part. We would like to rectify this situation.

KTRU's goal is to educate people about the vast world of underexposed music that is ignored completely by the commercial media. Because we believe this music is produced independent of the conventional genre designations, we broadcast in an eclectic free-form format without all the hype of commercial radio stations. KTRU DJs are given substantial freedom in deciding what music they play and are encouraged to explore new types of music. KTRU's eclectic format represents the university as a community that values learning and fosters new ideas.

With an effective radiated power of 50,000 watts and a broadcast range that reaches Brenham, our audience is not just Rice students but the greater Houston area. All 2,600 Rice undergraduates amount to only one tenth of our listening audience.

The recommendations of the KTRU committee do not change these goals, although they expand them to include additional, primarily non-musical, programming. For the most part, the recommendations made by the committee are issues we have wanted and tried to address but have been limited by labor, time and resources.

We appreciate the help of the university, but would like to stress that we need cooperation and support more than large sums of money and complicated bureaucracy. Rice University houses an enormous amount of student talent which, if harnessed, would be both cheaper for the university and a valuable educational experience for the students involved. For example, rather than hiring an outside "professional design consultant" for the renovation of the KTRU studios, we could enlist the students of the architecture school as Habitat for Humanity has done.

The recommendation that concerns us most is the hiring of a paid full-time general manager. We welcome a way to free student management from the more mundane aspects of running a radio station, so it can focus its efforts on improving and expanding programming content. However, we would like to express our concern that this general manager advise and administrate rather than oversee. The value of being student run is the opportunity to learn from our own mistakes. We believe changes to KTRU operations should increase student involvement rather than obviate it.

With this in mind, we at KTRU embrace the report of the committee as an opportunity to make our station even more diverse and educational without sacrificing that which makes us worthwhile.

Heather Colvin KTRU station manager SRC '00

Rick Sawyer

KTRU music director

Baker '00

Jeff Smith

KTRU music director

Brown '97

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the April 25, 1997 issue.