Originally, I was just going to excerpt this, but fellow Bakerite, Danny Mee's open letter to Leebron is so good, I'm posting the whole thing here.
An Open Letter to Rice University President David Leebron
By Mee
Or, Danny Blows His Stack, Part 3
Dear Mr. Leebron;
My name is Daniel Mee. I graduated from Rice with a Bachelor of Arts in 2002. My parents, who met and married while they were both undergraduates at Rice, are also alumni. After I graduated, I was a Rice staff member for three and a half years, and I now work for a company founded by Rice graduates that has employed at least four other Rice alumni. I currently play in a band founded by two other Rice alumni and a child of a Rice professor.
All of this is to say, I have very strong ties to Rice University. Additionally, I have strong ties to regional music and media communities—I am currently a freelance music writer for one of the Houston Chronicle’s online outlets, and have been a regular contributor to the print editions of the Houston Press and Austin Chronicle.
My introduction to the music and media communities came through KTRU-FM, where I was a DJ for seven years. Many of the closest connections I’ve maintained from my undergraduate years were formed at KTRU with my fellow DJs. As someone who values the unique and vital contributions of this radio station to Rice and the surrounding community, and feels strongly invested in both, I am deeply ashamed of the manner in which the Board of Trustees and the administration of Rice University have treated KTRU.
I was horrified to learn on Monday evening from the Houston Chronicle that Rice University was one day away from finalizing an agreement to sell the license and transmitter that are currently in use for the Rice student radio station. Not only were the students, faculty and staff of Rice not consulted about this plan, but the staff of the radio station were not even informed of it—they had to find out about it from the Chronicle’s website.
Later that evening, Mr. Leebron, I received an e-mail from you in which you outlined the reasons the University had decided to liquidate the student radio station. Among other things, you claimed that KTRU is a “vastly underutilized resource that is not essential to providing our students the wide range of opportunities they need,” citing that “[a] recent Arbitron report showed that KTRU’s audience was so small that it did not even register in the ratings.” You note that “KTRU will continue to serve its campus and external audience with student-managed programming via www.ktru.org.”
The ability to stream student programming over the internet is not a replacement for a radio broadcast for the simple fact that it cannot be heard on a radio. If KTRU-FM is liquidated, many listeners will no longer have access to KTRU programming. But the Arbitron report that you cite deals with this point neatly, does it not? The terrestrial listening audience is “so small that it did not even register in the ratings.”
It’s true that KTRU does not show up in Arbitron data, at least not in the most recent Arbitron report that I was able to access, but here is a brief list of other stations that do not appear: KTSU, KACC, KPFT, and KUHF, the University of Houston NPR affiliate that claims to have 300,000 daily listeners. Based on this data, one might conclude either that KUHF is also “not essential,” or that Arbitron ratings provide no useful data by which to judge the value of a noncommercial radio station.
Even assuming that the terrestrial broadcast of KTRU has a small audience, it is not at all clear to me that it follows that the station ought to be terminated. Most Rice students, alumni, faculty and staff probably have not contemplated that “underutilized resources” on campus are eligible for liquidation. Surely there are other assets that are ripe for divestiture. How many people visit the Rice Art Gallery on an average day? What about the Rice Media Center— is that still around? How many of Fondren library’s 2.6 million print volumes are consulted on a regular basis, now that most of the information contained therein is now available on the internet?
Perhaps we should start by demolishing the proportionally least-utilized resource in Rice history, the football stadium, which according to legend could not be filled even if every Rice alum, living or dead, were occupying a seat simultaneously. Clearly, it seems that the best course of action would be to demolish the stadium and use the space to alleviate Rice’s perpetual parking shortage, and simultaneously generate income through parking permit sales. Or, if the University really is desperate for cash, perhaps that portion of the campus can be partitioned off and sold.
Of course, we all know this idea would be untenable to the Board of Trustees. In 2004, a Rice-commissioned study by McKinsey Consulting recommended that Rice drop its division 1A athletics program, which was losing $10 million dollars per year, in favor of any of four less costly programs. After seeing this report, the Rice Board of Trustees chose to ignore this recommendation, thereby rendering the report a boondoggle in its own right.
But let’s back up a bit to the Rice athletics program losing $10 million per year. TEN MILLION DOLLARS. PER YEAR. This is more than the entire proceeds of the proposed sale of KTRU-FM. If only we had more radio stations to sell, we could subsidize athletics for years to come.
How dare you insult our intelligence by informing us that, in the name of university advancement, we must liquidate an educational resource to which hundreds of students have devoted thousands upon thousands of hours of volunteer labor to build and maintain over the course of 40 years, when the sale price doesn’t even match a fifth of the fortune that the athletics program lost in the last decade?
According to your e-mail, the proceeds from the sale are to be put in large part toward the construction of a new East Servery near Will Rice. While I’m sure that this will benefit the 400 or so students who are members of those colleges, I’m having difficulty seeing the need for this building. Undergraduate enrollment at Rice University has increased only 7% since I matriculated in 1998, and yet, since that time, Rice has added three new residential colleges and two new serveries. As I recall, I had no problem getting enough to eat when I was a freshman living on campus. Why is the construction of another servery so urgent that educational assets must be sold off to pay for it?
After all, Mr. Leebron, as you note in your e-mail, “the economic downturn which began two years ago has forced Rice . . . to make hard choices to prioritize spending and maximize the use of our resources.” Why wasn’t one of these “hard choices” to not build another new building until you have the cash on hand to pay for it? For the last fifteen years, the university has been spending like a drunken sailor, adding building after building, and now that we’re in a recession, rather than regroup, your strategy is to sell things off to raise capital.
I’m sure you are aware that, due to the recession, many state governments have been reduced to selling state property, such as public parks, to private corporations in order to balance their budgets as tax revenues decline (perhaps you are even aware that the state of Arizona has taken the bizarre measure of selling and then leasing back its own state capitol!). This state of affairs is generally considered to be a disgraceful indication of governmental breakdown, in which an abject failure of political courage has necessitated drastic, unsustainable and irreversible steps merely to stave off disaster.
Is this an indication that Rice is experiencing a similar crisis of political courage? You told the Houston Chronicle only six months ago that Rice might “need” to build a new football stadium soon, even as negotiations for the liquidation of an irreplaceable university resource were carried out behind the backs of faculty and students. How are we to interpret this?
In short, it strikes me that this sale is so unnecessary as to be perverse, and the reasoning proffered to justify it is hogwash. At least when, ten years ago, Rice last attempted a hostile takeover of KTRU-FM, it did so because it valued the opportunities availed to students and the community by FM radio, even though it completely overlooked the value of a student organization and a community voice unlike any other. In 2000, President Malcolm Gillis even told the Rice Thresher that he would not consider selling KTRU-FM. Today, by contrast, you deem KTRU-FM to be “not essential.” If you had consulted any of the dozens of the students who are KTRU DJs, or any of the 500+ alumni who are former KTRU DJs, or any of KTRU’s audience, or indeed anyone at the University at all, I believe you would have come to a different conclusion.
The administration of Rice University has an obligation, as a trustee of its students, faculty and alumni, to value our contributions and opinions just as concretely as it does a new building. Not only have you and the Board of Trustees failed to do so, you have made crucial and irreversible decisions about an invaluable part of this university in secret, without consulting or informing the people for whose benefit the institution ostensibly exists. This is a breach of trust and a violation of the mores of liberal education.
It is unethical.
When I was merely a prospective student, my parents, and the university itself, portrayed the school as an idealistic institution that valued the individual and often idiosyncratic contributions of students more highly than the money they paid for tuition. KTRU-FM, a radio station founded in a dorm room, managed almost exclusively by students and grown to national renown as one of the most adventurous and unusual college radio stations in the country, is a shining example of those contributions, and an essential part of the institution that I decided to attend. If KTRU is liquidated in the manner you have proposed, for me and many others, that institution will be severely and permanently damaged.
I know I speak not only for those members of the Rice community who have been involved with the radio station, but for those like my mother (Jones ‘80), who was never involved with KTRU but who, upon hearing of its impending sale, described it as “sickening.”
I would like to think that, when I have college-age children, I could recommend Rice to them in the same way my parents recommended it to me. Despite my lifelong connection to Rice, if you proceed with the sale of KTRU-FM, I most certainly will not be able to do so, nor could I in good conscience donate a red cent to an institution that places so little value on the contributions of those it purports to serve. Not that I imagine it matters, since the appalling practice of selling off bits and pieces of Rice’s legacy should be more than sufficient to finance the University’s continued improvement.
Sincerely,
Daniel Mee
Baker ’02
Many thanks to Angela Lee, Esq. (UT-Austin ’99, UH Law ’06) for editorial assistance.
Still true!
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