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| KBeach Radio Accuses Bookstore Of Censorship | ||||||
| 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." | ||||||
| Copyright Gerry Wachovsky, 2004, and Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. | ||||||
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