University of Waterloo Radio Station’s Survival is in Jeopardy
by Risa DickensNon-commercial community radio that emphasizes independent and local alongside intrepid international audio - can we agree this sounds like a good thing? I don’t know much about the current debate at University of Waterloo aside from what is described below, and the brief mention my new Indyish friend made when she (who seems to represent at the indie radio, video store and theatre in town…indie art stars are hard workin’) passed this along: that the decision at this point seems up to the students, though the community participates in and benefits from the historic station that’s about to be gouged of its funding.
Sidenote: For me, any mention of Waterloo tugs on nostalgic heart-strings. I was a total university brat, running wild around the Waterloo student housing and rocking to community radio … Nowadays you don’t need the fancy metal head gear we had to get the radio, no, you can check it out online… for as long as it lasts…
Press Release
For Immediate Release 17 January, 2008
CKMS-FM Radio Waterloo, the campus and community radio station based
on the University of Waterloo campus is in danger of going off the
air in September 2008, as a result of a student referendum to remove
all student funding.
The Federation of Students, at a council meeting held on Sunday
January 13, passed the following motion: “BIRT the Federation of
Students approve the following question for referendum,: ‘Do you
support the removal of the $5.50 per term fee for CKMS, the campus
community radio station at the University of Waterloo, effective the
Fall term of 2008?’” The referendum is to be held concurrently with
the 2008-2009 Federation of Students Elections some time in February.
CKMS-FM has been broadcasting from the University of Waterloo campus
since October 15, 1977. Programming on CKMS-FM is produced by
volunteers from both the University of Waterloo and the Kitchener-
Waterloo community. CKMS-FM can be heard on the FM dial at 100.3
throughout the Waterloo region.
Station Manager Heather Majaury says, “The irretrievable loss of CKMS-
FM to the campus and community would leave a huge void. Voices that
currently have access to the airwaves would be silenced: students,
students groups, individual community members, and community groups.
For example, The Chinese Student Association, The Aboriginal
Students’ Association, The World of Chamber Music (produced by the
Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society), multicultural groups
(Latin American, Portuguese, Indian, Arabic, Islamic); not to mention
the tremendous amount of independent music and genres heard no where
else on the local dial.”
“CKMS right now is the only radio station in Canada to be delivering
(or slated to be delivering) student-driven entrepreneurship content
and speaking in general it is the only the radio station that UW
students have easy access to, therefore there is strong collaboration
potential with programs such as media studies and speech
communication.”
Dmitri Artamonov, UW New Venture Pathways
“CKMS-FM has provided information, insights, and cultural moments
that are unique within our community. It is the university’s voice
for the community.”
John English, Executive Director, CIGI (Centre for International
Governance Innovation)
“CKMS has been instrumental to Athletics. Without their partnership,
we would not be able to provide all our broadcasts of Warriors
Athletics to our audiences. Their technical expertise has been
critical to the success of our broadcasting productions.”
Chris Gilbert, UW Athletics
“As a University of Waterloo alumna, I can honestly say that I
wouldn’t be where I am today without the welcoming, supportive and
leaning environment of CKMS… It may sound cheesy, but CKMS really
is one microcosm of our great, bit country — the University of
Waterloo included. Harmonious diversity doesn’t get any better than
this!”
Caitlin Crockard
Regional Music Producer, CBC Radio, and proud alumna of UW and CKMS
“As a volunteer programmer at CKMS, and UW alumna, I am able to give
something back. On my weekly show, called ‘The First Sound’, I play
percussive music from around the world. Since percussion is the
oldest music besides singing, and has always been ‘unplugged’, it is
also the music of the people. UW is truly multicultural, but this
isn’t reflected in the music local commercial radio stations play. UW
students from all over the world can tune in to CKMS and hear the
music of their homelands, whether they’re from Asia, Africa or the
Middle East. You can’t put a price on that.”
Kat the Drumming Diva, host of The First Sound, Mondays from 6-7:30 pm
For further information, please contact:
Heather Majaury, Station Manager
CKMS-FM Radio Waterloo
phone: (519) 886-2567 ext. 202
email: stationmanager@ ckmsfm.ca
Listen to this article
Published on: January 23rd, 2008
Related Tags: canada, community, independent, Music, radio, university
Browse All: Recent Blog Posts »
About: Risa Dickens
Risa co-founded Indyish with Elran Oded.
Aside from experimenting with these monstrous/sexy formations, producing Indyish events and developing new and existing Indyish endeavors, and trying to figure out how to do it armed[...]
as a recent newbie to the radio world, i feel a tremendous sense of the importance, as well as the dangerous unerappreciation for this medium. ARG!! Radio!!! It’s so amazing!! Why doesn’t our generation realize that???
My parents, who lived through the tail-end of the 2nd World War in the UK (my dad) and through the height of the Cold War in the US (my mom) are radio addicts. It was only during the ice storm that I began to understand why radio is so important to them…those voices in the darkness coming out of the air, while we cook or sip tea or cuddle or eat…it’s so much more wonderful than television, and so much more community-building.
Radio Magic!!! Lest we forget!!!
Posted on January 25th, 2008 at 8:52 am [permalink]
Can you send me an annual budget of the radio station? Maybe I can round up a few dollars to Save our station!
Jay
Posted on April 6th, 2008 at 3:42 pm [permalink]
hey jay - i’ll put you in touch with them!
Posted on April 6th, 2008 at 5:40 pm [permalink]
hmm jay! i thought i knew you, but kindness of strangers! turns out i don’t know which jay you are, jay, but here is the contact i have at the radio station: http://www.indyish.com/author/suitewriter and i’ll email to put you in touch.
i’m pretty sure they’d love any and all kinds of help, since they lost the referendum… sigh.
Posted on April 7th, 2008 at 12:21 pm [permalink]
The referendum resulted in the defunding of CKMS. The results were 2280 in favour of defunding, with 1081 against; a 2-1 margin. The remaining 87% of students didn’t care enough for CKMS to point-and-click to save it in the very accessible web-based referendum.
The opposition to the CKMS fee came from a diverse set of perspectives:
- Some are opposed to all opt-out fees. Some of these students are poor; some are cheap and selfish; and some have a principled opposition to the opt-out fee system, which involves a conflict of interest where the very parties whose interests are served by having as low a refund rate as possible are in charge of running the refunds. To get a CKMS refund, for example, one had to go to where many students consider is the middle of nowhere, on Bauer Warehouse Road (which wasn’t even paved until recently), in a narrow set of office hours on a narrow range of days at the beginning of the term. Some students study in Cambridge, and for them a round trip to get a refund would cost, in gasoline, most if not all of the refund.
- Some don’t value FM radio.
- Some might be open to, or even supportive of, campus radio, but were opposed to the repeated acts of corruption and abuse of power by the CKMS establishment. These include:
— holding meetings in a poisoned environment
— violating CKMS’s own bylaws to silence their critics (even CKMS’s own attorney is on the record in the meeting minutes of a meeting following a past AGM as saying that a vote that station manager Heather Majaury obstructed was perfectly legal)
— obstructing student access to budget and governance information that even CKMS’s own attorney stated was their right (the leader of the opposition campa
ign, who was entitled to the information, received some of it weeks after the referendum was over, and this information included the previous event of the v
iolation of bylaws, so if CKMS had not underhandedly obstructed the rightful access to this information the results of the referendum might have been an even more dramatic rejection of CKMS)
— breaking referendum rules repeatedly, including campaigning repeatedly before the allowed campaign period (an unfair advantage over the opposing campaig
n, which followed the rules) and distributing false information to voters
— using station resources for their campaign, which is forbidden by student council rules because it creates an unfair playing field (the opposing campaig
n spent only $34)
— the supporters of CKMS showing utter hostility and contempt for the democratic process by defacing and removing posters put up by the opposing campaign
(this can not be linked directly to the CKMS establishment)
Some references:
http://jeffaho.com/archives/ckms-referendum/
http://community.livejournal.com/uwaterloo/515664.html http://jeffaho.com/archives/synaesthetik/
http://community.livejournal.com/uwaterloo/518397.html
http://www.lunarluau.ca/blog/?p=249
http://atuw.ca/opinion-ckms-endgame-analysis/
(this comment may be of particular interest)
http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2008/02/19/waterloo-students-say-enough-decide-to-keep-their-five-bucks/ http://spinningindie.blogspot.com/2008/04/canadian-college-radio-station-ckms-one.html
Posted on May 7th, 2008 at 1:02 pm [permalink]
Having just heard about the situation and the vote that went down, I can’t say I’m surprised.
I served as president of the board of directors at CKMS for a year. Coincidentally, a year that Caitlin Crockard was also on the board. Needless to say, CKMS up to that point wasn’t ever really ‘campus/community radio’. It was always slanted towards the community, while always taking moneys from the campus. For that year, we tried our best to right that ship, and I think we made some good headway. In fact, our board were the ones who initiated the whole station manager process to get Heather in there in the first place. Unfortunately, from the looks of things, the move towards more student involvement never happened, and this is the end result. Back when I was on the board, this endgame was mentioned many times but was never taken seriously.
There was never a real effort to work with students. There was never a real effort to move closer to campus. There was never a real effort to cater programming to students. It was almost like they were TRYING to bite the hand that fed them.
Not surprised at all.
Posted on May 11th, 2008 at 12:03 pm [permalink]