After an uneventful meeting over K-UTE’s ASUU funding produced no more than a lot of swear words from a certain graduate adviser’s mouth on Thursday, K-UTE is taking its message to the people.
To raise awareness, interest and funding, K-UTE AM 1620 will broadcast “protest radio around the clock,” said Lizzy Fargus, K-UTE graduate adviser.
“We’re sick of being victims to ASUU’s whims,” Fargus said. “We’re going to show them that if they want to do what their student body wants them to do, they have to give us lots of money.”
“Protest radio” consists of “taking it to the people 24/7,” Fargus said. It’s principally five-hour marathons of Fargus and the two other people who work for K-UTE singing “America the Beautiful” while volunteer passers-by sing “We’re Not Going to Take It.”
Fargus has also threatened that, like in the Senate meeting, she might say the “f word” on the radio, which would, of course, violate FCC regulations and get her beaten by government stoolies wielding sacks full of doorknobs.
The “protest radio” will broadcast this entire week until late Thursday, when the Student Senate will decide whether or not to pull the $20,000 in student fees K-UTE gets from ASUU every year.
Apart from public service announcements and FCC mandated station identification, K-UTE will broadcast nothing but protest radio whenever it’s on the air, which comes out to about 37 and one-half minutes per day.
“I think it’s great that they’re doing this,” said Ben Lowe, ASUU president. “K-UTE is part of student life and they need to be out their talking to the students and getting their information down. We totally support them on this.”
Lowe seemed to have forgotten that pulling K-UTE’s funding was his idea to begin with.
“A student radio station is definitely an important part of campus life for students and other members of the community,” he continued. “It’s important to all those people in the dorms who don’t listen to it, to those people in the parking lots whose car radios can’t receive it and those people in the listening lounge who cut the wires to the speaker so they don’t have to listen to it.
“If [K-UTE] can really change things with this ‘protest radio,’ they’ll take it to the next level,” Lowe said.