By Karon Liu
Features Editor
Ryerson’s campus radio station is in legal limbo since its membership decided to impeach its board of directors two weeks ago, just weeks after the University of Waterloo voted to cut funding from its campus station.
While CKLN’s staff and volunteers argue that the board acted imporperly in hiring one of its own to a key position in the radio station, the board doesn’t recognize the impeachment vote and wants to keep on running the station.
Station Manager Mike Phillips hopes that his radio station, which is funded 60 per cent by a levy paid by Ryerson students, will be known more for its programming than its internal conflicts.
“My vision for CKLN has not changed from which it was formulated in 2003. I’m still looking at it five to eight years from now. I see it as being stable, I see it having more money, having more students involved, more listeners and power, and not having any staff hassles,” he said.
Students at the University of Waterloo recently voted to cut off funding for their campus radio station, CKMS-FM, starting September.
Station manager Heather Majaury believes that despite CKLN’s problems, cutting funding isn’t the best solution.
“Threatening funding seems more like a controlling mechanism than an adjudicating mechanism,” she said. “It’s like Stephen Harper shutting down the CBC because it’s not living up to his expectations.”
The radio station and the student government have to find a middle ground she said, and that radio stations need to sort out internal conflicts for themselves.
“I think that organizations like CKLN are constantly learning and growing. There have to be proper acilitations for adequate negotiations to occur. Traditionally, campus radio struggled with its own maturity and there has to be a certain level of understanding about their roles.”
So far, no one has called for the station to lose its student funding, but nearly everyone is exasperated by the station’s relentless infighting — at a board meeting of the Ryerson Students’ Union, the union voted to encourage the staff and board to reconcile.
Leave a Reply