KBeach
radio accuses Bookstore of censorship
By
Gerry Wachovsky
On-line Forty-Niner
KBeach
Radio, the student-run Internet radio station
on campus, appealed to the A.S. Senate Wednesday
asking for help in resolving a possible
censorship issue.
According
to Ray Hernandez, general manager of KBeach,
speakers where the station could be heard
were turned off by the University Bookstore
after the station broadcast a rival bookseller’s
commercials, possibly causing the Bookstore
to lose revenue.
KBeach,
Hernandez said, believed the speakers by
The Nugget and Culinary Wraps were turned
off “within two weeks” after
the ads for Aida’s University Book
Exchange, Inc., aired, but admitted that
this was only an estimate.
Sen.
Morgan Wheeler said he found it to be “a
little suspicious” that the speakers
were shut off, but the Senate did not rule
out the possibility that the Bookstore could
have been losing money. According to Wheeler,
at the height of its sales the Bookstore
makes “about a million dollars a day,”
something Vice President Guido Piotti alluded
to when he noted that the store had recently
lost “approximately $800,000 in book
sales.”
Criminal
justice professor Harvey Morley said he
wondered whether there was a contractual
agreement specifying the radio station could
broadcast spots for a rival company on the
Bookstore’s property, but Richard
Haller, executive director for A.S.I., said
that he had not looked at the contract.
Morley also questioned if it was within
the Bookstore’s rights to actually
“tamper with” or disrupt the
station’s signal and if the issue
at hand and instructions on how to resolve
it were covered in the contract. If this
particular issue was addressed verbally,
Morley said, “Verbal agreements tend
to disintegrate over time.”
Sen.
Rebekah Smith, who is a future member of
the 49er Shops board of directors, guaranteed
that the issue would be addressed at the
group’s next meeting.
In
other news, the Senate sent a resolution
authorizing the creation of an A.S. Inspector
General position to Documents & Bylaws
for further editing. According to Haller,
the position would entail “overseeing
program evaluation” and auditing campus
groups if need be. Mike Hostetler, dean
of students, noted that there could be “larger
ramifications” to creating positions
“that can inspect groups for malfeasance.”
Wheeler
called it a “beautiful piece of legislation,”
but said he was concerned it could turn
into a “big brother police-style entity.”
Morley, on the other hand, said that the
big brother analogy was not appropriate
since auditing entities are “quite
common in a corporation.”
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