Early this fall, a group of faculty began discussing the University’s problematic relation with KUGN-AM. We shared this issue with equally concerned students and immediately informed the administration of our desire to discuss it. Last week, the first of what was understood to be several meetings was held to reach some resolution of this complicated issue. But late Friday, University President Dave Frohnmayer issued a press release that appears to abruptly terminate that discussion.
I do not believe that the issue is as simple as the president asserts. One point of agreement is the hate-filled character of KUGN broadcasts. Frohnmayer deems them “disgraceful”; KUGN’s own program manager calls them “offensive.” The question is how to respond. Let me present my own view on the issue.
The president’s position rests on a confusion. He correctly insists that the University cannot manage speech or take political positions. No one disagrees with this. But the president confuses this claim with a further one — that the University can take no interest at all in a station’s character when contracting with it. Any concern with what “the Voice of the Ducks” is attached to is a violation of “free speech.”
This second principle cannot be right. Believing it means that if a porno channel offered the highest price for our games, we would be bound by the First Amendment to accept it. We would be bound to proclaim “the Voice of the Ducks” in between “Sex Court” and “How to Cheat on Your Wife.” We would be bound by political neutrality to run pictures of our star athletes next to ads for “Barnyard Fun.”
Frohnmayer’s views may commit him to this. But then they are flatly at odds with University practice over the past 30 years. During that time, the University has periodically been asked to rent its campus to movie companies and has always based its decision on whether the film’s content reflects well on the University. No one has ever argued that the First Amendment obliges us to rent our campus to smut. Why does it oblige us to rent our logo to hate?
It is important to keep in mind why we have big-time sports in the first place. Frohnmayer has repeatedly told faculty that athletics and its broadcasts serve to enhance the image of the University as a whole.
Then surely it is appropriate to ask if our current relation with KUGN serves this goal, if that image is one opposed to hatred and bigotry. Is KUGN really the best venue for promoting our school among young people of color, a group that administrators say they want to attract — but which KUGN hosts consistently attack?
Some will point out that my parallel is not exact, and they would be right. Dealing with KUGN is not exactly like dealing with a porn channel. But the converse holds too: Reassessing our relation to KUGN is not exactly like infringing on someone’s free speech.
A serious discussion of these matters might proceed by seeking to balance our concern for free speech with the very real pain that members of this community feel when they forget to turn the dial after the football game is over. I hope that we can continue this dialogue.