Re: Boston talk / Pacifica

["Aaron [Bishop] Read" <aread@speakeasy.net>]

At 03:06 AM 7/31/2002, elipolo@earthlink.net wrote:
>The station management is mostly MIT students. MIT requires that the GM
>(and PD, I believe) must be MIT students. MIT would like to see a higher
>percentage of student involvement, since the on-campus portion of the 
>station's
>funding comes from the student activities budget, and it is the 
>highest-funded
>"student activity" on campus.
>(snip)
>Eli Polonsky

Those who know me know I'm not one for staying quiet in the first place, 
but this touches on a HUGE pet peeve of mine: virtually every college 
around Boston (and no doubt around the country) with a radio station wants 
something for nothing.  By that, I mean they want all students at the 
station, AND they want it to sound like a professionally-run station.  But 
they're not willing to invest one dime in any sort of class structure to 
encourage students to join the station and teach them what to do while 
they're there....nor are they willing to realize that a radio station is a 
RADIO STATION...not a frickin' student activity.  You can slap a "student 
activity" label on it all day long but that doesn't change the fact that 
running a station is 50 times more expensive than any other student activity.

The chess club does not need a kilowatt of electricity every second of 
every day for a transmitter.
The peer education network (PEN) does not need staff to stay active 24 
hours a day.
The street theater performers don't have to maintain $50000 of audio 
equipment in a studio.
And virtually no student group has to deal with an audience that by and 
large is not on campus and couldn't care less about collegiate concerns.

Sorry about the rant, folks.  :-/


____________________________________________
Aaron "Bishop" Read     aread@speakeasy.net
FriedBagels.com Technical Consulting
www.friedbagels.com   AOL-IM: ReadAaron
"I'm weird, but around here it's barely noticeable."