As recently as the early 90s, WLUW–the Loyola University-owned radio station at 88.7 FM–delivered a slick, tedious all-dance format that seemed designed to churn out future WBMX jocks. But changes implemented by the school’s communication department over the past half decade have transformed it into one of the city’s most valuable radio stations, diversifying the music programming and, in keeping with the school’s Jesuit orientation, prioritizing community service. Now the on-air staff is professional without being cloying or annoying, and there’s an emphasis on local music. The station also hosts a variety of programs serving the Ethiopian, Bulgarian, Native American, Guatemalan, Haitian, and Jewish communities and provides a much-needed outlet for progressive political and cultural programs like Radio Nation, the gay and lesbian radio magazine This Way Out, and Counterspin, a weekly show from the media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. The station’s good work hasn’t fallen on deaf ears. This past fall New City readers voted WLUW Chicago’s best radio station–impressive given that the station broadcasts at only 100 watts to WXRT’s 6,700, Q101’s 6,000, and WBEZ’s 8,100.
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Yet about a month later the acting dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, David Slavsky, sent a memo to a professor in the communication department stating that WLUW, whose current budget is $159,000, could no longer be funded exclusively with tuition money. The memo made its way through the department, and on November 14, Loyola’s student newspaper, the Phoenix, broke the story. Since then, WLUW has been operating under the worst-case assumption that in July, when fiscal year 2003 starts, the station will be on its own.
Furthermore, it seems unreasonable to ask WLUW to do without tuition money when students pay tuition money in part to gain access to its facilities. A dozen courses offered by Loyola’s communication department make use of the station’s equipment or airtime, and WLUW’s current budget includes two full-time staff members, Campbell and station manager Craig Kois, both of whom double as instructors. Kois is teaching two production classes of 12 students each; Campbell is teaching an introductory audio production class with 19 students. A semester’s tuition for a full-time student, taking 12 to 18 credit hours, is $9,736. Kois’s 24 students earn three credit hours each, so if they’re full-time they’re collectively paying between $39,000 and $58,000 to take those courses. Campbell’s students, who earn between one and three credit hours for her class depending on how much time they put in at the station, collectively pay somewhere between $10,000 and $46,000.
Jeff Harder, an associate professor in the communication department who helped design the station’s current format, is also alarmed by the administration’s silence on the matter: “Is this an attack on the format and how the station functions as an educational unit? They’ve said nothing to dissuade us from those concerns. If they’re not going to talk, they have to let us raise the issues and prove us wrong. What are they discussing? It doesn’t take a year to come up with a financing formula.”
