When KWVA was founded in 1993 by a group of University students, it was the intention of those students that the campus radio would be under student control. The FCC licensee is owned by the ASUO. A board of directors with a student majority was established as KWVA’s governing body. This board has been responsible for hiring the student general manager and senior staff members. One of KWVA’s core functions, as reflected in its mission statement, is to present programming from a student perspective.
However, on July 1 of this year, KWVA will complete an administrative and budgetary process by which it will cease to be an ASUO program under student control, and will instead become an EMU program under University control. The planning for this change started in May 2005, without the knowledge of most University students. KWVA officials, frustrated by the need to seek annual budget approval by the ASUO Programs Finance Committee, concluded that the station could secure a more stable funding source if it were to become an EMU program.
Under its new status, KWVA’s board of directors is to be replaced by an advisory board that will have no authority over the station’s operation. The new general manager will no longer be a student, but will be an officer of administration employed by the University. The general manager will no longer report to a student board, but rather to the EMU’s director of student activities, who is a
University official. The station’s senior staff members, who will continue to be students, will be hired, trained and supervised by this non-student general manager.
It is often stated that “everyone” has agreed to this change for KWVA.
However, when this proposal was first being discussed with ASUO officials last fall, it was suggested that the officer of administration would be a support person who would take some of the workload off student staff by dealing with FCC compliance issues. KWVA, it was stated, would still be run and managed by students. But, somewhere along the way, the officer of administration acquired the “general manager” title along with all the powers of the former student GM.
Although the ASUO approved KWVA’s changed status, many ASUO officials did not fully understand that the officer of administration’s job description had evolved to create a sort of super-CEO with virtually unlimited authority over the station’s operation.
For now, this change for KWVA should not be allowed to go into effect. The ASUO Executive should work with KWVA officials to further examine ways for the station to achieve fiscal stability while remaining a student-controlled organization.
Thirteen years ago a handful of University students had a vision they brought to fruition: a student-run radio station under student control. The KWVA of today comes from that legacy. If KWVA’s planned change in structure goes fully into effect as scheduled on July 1, student control of this important media outlet will be gone forever. And that will be an enormous loss for all University students.
Gerry Gazlay was a member of the KWVA board of directors from 1996 to 1999.