Ripples from KHSU’s Purge Spread: Sacramento Bee Has Article
KHSU’s former office manager, Lorna Bryant, in the foreground as locals gathered outside the station April 11 not long after staffers were told their jobs no longer existed. [Photo by Ryan Hutson]
Two days ago, former and current north coast lawmakers denounced the surprising decision in a letter to the Chancellor of the California State University system. Senator Mike McGuire sent out a press release calling the move “a slap in the face to Humboldt State University students, employees and the community at large.”
Today, the Sacramento Bee, the largest paper in Northern California, took up the story. The piece noted,
University president Lisa A. Rossbacher is catching much of the static. Rossbacher announced she will retire from Humboldt State June 30 after five years at the helm. A nationwide search is underway for Rossbacher’s successor.
The Sac Bee said that a “chancellor’s spokesman Friday called the move a campus-based decision based on financial realities at the university and said the CSU’s White will soon talk with the lawmakers. [Senator Mike] McGuire expects that to happen as early as next week.”
According to the Bee, McGuire told them, “How this unfolded is completely unacceptable. KHSU isn’t just a radio station – it’s an audio gathering ground that’s been in existence for a half-century.”
To read the rest of the story, click here.
Earlier Chapters:
- KHSU’s Community Advisory Board Submits Vote of No Confidence in General Manager
- Do the Right Thing–a Member of KHSU’s Advisory Board Demands the General Manager’s Resignation
- ‘It’s a Death in Our Community’: Locals Reeling After KHSU Locks Doors and Streams Chico Radio Station
- KHSU’s Newly Appointed Acting Director Resigns Saying He Is ‘Saddened, Disappointed and Angry’
- Last Remaining Staff Member at KHSU Resigns
- Former and Current North Coast Lawmakers Denounce Surprise Shutdown of KHSU
Join the discussion! For rules visit: https://kymkemp.com/commenting-rules
Comments system how-to: https://wpdiscuz.com/community/postid/10599/
🕯Thank you Kym for that expanded information and link.
The whole state is watching! ✌🏽
“The community is in a uproar” I must be part of a different community because I haven’t heard so much as a whisper. Aside from this site. I asked a few friends their opinions on the subject who have lived their entire lives here and they didn’t even know and could of cared less.
My community that I talk to is pretty upset. It definitely depends on who you hang out with though.
Absolutely, and that’s fair. And as usual you are the voice of reason, but as the voice of reason you kinda proved my point, “my community” not “the community”. I hate to split hairs and I don’t mean to belittle people’s work but the community isn’t in a uproar about HSU doing anything, the community is in a uproar about things like abatements and the future of our lives here.
It is possible for people to be worried about abatements, about the economy, and about the loss of an important source of news all at once. Perhaps the folks you hang out with aren’t concerned about all those. But the sixth biggest story in April on my website is the KHSU firing of volunteers. That says it’s a story of interest to many others, too.
Thank you, Kym. Myopic viewpoints get rather tedious.
So Mike, how would your community feel if KMUD did a pledge drive then announced they were shutting down 3 days after it ended? Well that’s how a lot of us feel.
We’re all community here, that’s rural/small town life. I may disagree with a neighbors politics or listen to a different radio station but in an emergency I would be right there to help them and hope they would do the same for us.
No we not all a community. We are different communities that happen to be in the same location. And apparently the thing we have in common is that we have no respect for each other and think freedom is being able to say so in no uncertain terms.
Sad but true.
I called McGuires office when this happened to ask for help and am so glad to hear him responding.
I have to say its a pretty cool experience to vote for someone and have them get involved in community matters on a local level.
Thanks Mike!
Hold them to task and please look at the independent review of supposed lack of funds at HSU that contradicted the admins statements.
To read that HSU had the highest application numbers of all CSU’s and then have the the admin claim enrollments down….whaaa???
We want local people at the helm of HSU not another transplant whos going to screw things up more. Their salary and living expenses need to be cut down too.
Youre not getting your housing project HSU. Not now especially.
You said you’d never increase student numbers then you did without providing housing for them while letting your old dorms fall apart, & you want us to add more housing due to your inadequacy, screw you!
We have limited water and waste treatment, that housing puts a strain on our infrastructure that i dont hear HSU saying theyll help with.
We will boycott your housing project, thinking that you could get it approved with contractors from LA and a management company in LA.
You should know better.
Anyone know what happened to the 500,000 raised for the football program did Lisa pocket that???
I miss KHSU so much! No other programming compares. I hope we can, at some point, resurrect KHSU even if it happens through a different community radio station. I know my husband and I would up our donations to make that happen.
I graduated from HSU thirty years ago and supported them for years. I was mad when football ended and now really mad about KHSU. I think there needs to be an independent audit to see were the money went. Enrollment is high enough that students out number available apartments in the area.
So is there financial mismanagement? Let’s find out with a high degree of transparency.
KHSU was not about money, it was about purging a destructive force from the institution. This was a bold and smart long-term move and I’m quite shocked that HSU had the gall to do it. Good for them. Note that if the content many suppose to be missing was actually any good there would be no trouble at all putting all this talent back to work – it’s not as though the local radio dial is full or something. Returning the station to its purpose of serving the students is a good thing and if some Arcata people want to have their own vanity station there is basically nothing stopping them from starting it today. They don’t because that would require actual work and an audience willing to pay for their drivel, neither of which are likely to manifest.
Football was cut because hardly anyone attended games or gave a damn. This is not a college football town nor really for anything that thrives on focused dedication and “event” mentality around the games each week. The cost of participating in NCAA athletics is ridiculous and it would be nice if it returned to a more intramural, fun approach instead of big business. Good for them in getting out of that, too.
Meanwhile, the nursing program is back, something actually valuable to the students and community. Keep some perspective, people.
The revival of the nursing program has been jeopardozed by this move. The chief fundraiser for the reinstatement of the nursing program said that the top donars are rethinking whether they want to collaborate with HSU, much less contribute to this venture. “Keep some perspective” indeed.
Libs really keep crying when things don’t go their way.
They should auction off a golden Prius to raise money for it to come back, if it’s all that important.
It’s gotta be what company you keep that cares about this, because it doesn’t seem important at all.
Have the libs rally up some donations or sell tofu, set it back up instead of crying about it.
Death before Prius. Also, “Black Market Lives Matter” is a good one. People who don’t drive hybrids and electric junk, and who sell in the black market, not paying taxes, are true patriots. And the black market is not only pot, anything we can do to make our stuff, sell it, and not pay taxes, is very cool. Support the black market.
Here is an excerpt of a local news blog:
“For context, over the last year HSU has funded nearly half the cost of KHSU. Listener support provided about 22 percent, corporate underwriting 17 percent, and government grants 12 percent. HSU directly paid more than $265,000 in salary, covered at least $250,000 for space and utilities, and spent at least $80,000 receiving and processing contributions to the station.”
I am surprised that a California State University Campus was spending so much to support an extra radio station!
Isn’t this the campus overrun with so many extra students that there is no housing? Which has students living in their vehicles and showering in the gym? Isn’t this the campus where the Health Center employees are paid HALF of the competitive wage to work professional level positions?
What does this campus have to offer? It’s not Berkeley, it isn’t Davis, it sure isn’t Santa Cruz… Who the heck wants to go to college in, Arcata? I am pretty surprised that the whole campus wasn’t closed down…
If the decision making here is typical of the way the place is operated, the State of California should wash their hands of the whole damn thing. I know I am unimpressed!
So, let’s get out the protest signs, and, I wonder what Mario Savio is doing these days! It sure seems like the folks involved here want their jobs back, but, how much were they being paid at the campus that pays Allied Healthcare Professionals $20/hr? And many of the former employees and supporters appear to be a little old, to be hanging around a State College Campus… If this is the prime issue that sharpens the focus of the Campus and the Community, rather than the sad state of the town, housing, the condition of the campus in general, and the State University System in particular, we must be in a pretty sad state… Instead of looking at the lack of decent healthcare, mental health services, and the homeless issues, we are protesting the loss of a RADIO STATION? Who the heck listens to radio in the age of Spotify, NPR, and the Internet?
To me, the State of California was spending WAY too much money to support a hobbyist entity which was apparently getting too political, which was in the thrall of some folks who may have been sending the wrong message and who was too involved, too possessive, too enamored of their importance, and who may have been out of the immediate control of the University.
I guess it’s too bad that all those old guys can no longer play their favorite old music in public…
Humboldt Narcissists strike again!
No wonder it was closed.
Hey, how about like one reader said, go out and get our own radio station. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to run a radio station? Did it cost that much to start or run KMUD? Perhaps we could find some wealthy private people to help financially for something positive, instead of paying for negative political adds which accomplish nothing. Start and adopt a station, which allows all sides of thought. Tom Steyer spent over 10 million dolars on negative ads which changed no minds, accomplished nothing. He could have spent that money on 9 Da Vinci robot machines for hospitals to cure cancer, like one of them did for me. A free thought community radio station with weather would be great, where both sides have a say. There have to be used transmitters and equipment, let’s find some, and put them to work.
Mario Savio RIP 11/6/96 Sebastopol CA
I see your point. I really don’t have any real connection to who works there, or what they get paid. It does matter for a community like ours where internet access isn’t great, and we are very spread out. There are a lot of people who rely on KHSU for community goings on, good quality news compared to cable news, and good weird music. Information is important! I see a direct line between the drop of good quality news in this country and where we are now as a nation. A population who mostly get their news from cable news intertainment shows or echo chamber internet sites. It’s sad and it’s how we get celebrity show presidents and a very divided country.
I don’t care who pushes the buttons at KHSU but we need a good radio station here and another question; why fire the volunteers? It sounds like a mess there now, I hope they get it together.
I appreciate your comments but you don’t live here right? So what do you care?
Trouble is, KHSU public affairs programming had become part of a local echo chamber along with Lost Coast Outpost and North Coast Journal. Thursday Night Talk used to be decent, but somewhere around 20 years ago it became a bad joke. Back when I was a regular listener it was for some of the NPR programming and some of the music, and those were the most popular facets of KHSU. I doubt that many of the local chattering programs could stand on their own merits in terms of support.
Billy clearly your not a member or even a listener.Thats fine but it makes it clear you don’t really have a clue.The universities contribution to to station can be mostly seen as strait up graft.200,000 dollars a year in rent?!130,000 dollars to pay a GM who literally does nothing, and a 14.5 processing fee for all the donations. I agree it’s time for this station to divorce itself from HSU. An organization that is clearly so top heavy it could fire 5 administrators and save 1,000,000 dollars outright.A community radio station will emerge from these ashes.We will build it better than its ever been.Unfortunatly the same can not be said of the university as a whole.Meanwhile a haters got to hate, so at least your brave enough to not use some cute moniker like so many do.Anyone interested in more information should watch the YouTube video put out by KEET last Thursday in which real community members Jeff DeMark ,Jana Kirk Levine and Phil Record discuss this situation. We will be the change we want in this world.
Mike McGuire is an extortionists accomplice trampling on the constitution of our great nation.standing by while his peers illegally(according to the constitution,and unanamously voted to be law by the supreme court)extort the population of northern California. It’s time to see some fresh faces in politics in northern California these corparate sellouts are only worried about there next campaign contributor.didnt they violate the bylaws of our party by backing a corrupt Republican supervisor. Khsu was a icon of free speech un malested by mainstream media and we need these free speech stations to keep dirty politicians(95% of them) exposed.
The United states needs to belong to the people again its been stolen by corparate America and the sell out politicians that take there money to get in office !!!!!!
Basically most of what I know about HSU comes from the news nowadays. I gave up listening to NPR in general , then KHSU in specific, a few years ago, as program by program, the ones I enjoyed disappeared or aged out and their replacements became boringly monotonous. I figured that I was no longer in tune with it as its humor became meaner and its music more generic. It became all vitiolic as if complaints were all it knew. Who needs that. Life is hard enough without choosing to make it worse.
What the news keeps telling me is that, while there seems to be more and more students, the University can not afford to house them in the way it has become accustomed to (I remember the multimillion dollars entrance sign created because the University said that there was no ‘clear’ distinction between where the University started and everywhere else ended. So ironic…) That the nursing program was too expensive and it was too hard to find a director for it to keep despite being a clear benefit to the community. That bus loads of potential students from disadvantaged areas way down south were brought up to try to sell them on coming to HSU while, since they couldn’t afford their education themselves, the University would not house them either. I’ve never been interested in football but losing that locally popular sport with grooming other sport to win over local supporters cut off the community even more. Anything and everything not in line with a narrow social agenda was out. There was no place apparently for people who had a life they dared to enjoy.
KHSU left the community at least a few years before the HSU left KHSU.
Let me guess, you used to listen to just Garrison Kiellor and Car Talk…
McNeill Lehrer, Morning Edition, Going for Baroque, Wait, Wait- Don’t Tell Me, A Way with Words. But yes, Car Talk if I caught it. I suppose you meant to be snarky suggesting I watched nothing of what you think is of substance. As I never found someone else telling me what to think worthwhile, opinion shows like Democracy Now or All things Considered (a real misleading name) are a bore. But I guess for those who need to be told what to be outraged about, such shows are important. Oh, I liked Fresh Air when it was at I time I could listen.
Gotta say I used to listen to KHSU, commonly pronounced “KUSH”, anyone else remember those days? Wild strange music, most news was not mainstream even though its always been leaning left it was still good stuff. But yeah I haven’t tuned in to them in quite a while, way too much corporate NPR and Amy Goodwin lost it a while back, so yeah, I’m not shedding tears over this.
Amy “Goodwin?”
What pisses me off is the big pension Rossbacher receives when she retires, which should be denied She destroyed school programs, shocked students and the community with little or no regard. This system of pensions is a slap to the tax payers of california
Ms. Kemp is doing her best to keep the KHSU whine fest alive.
23 comments for this thread demonstrates that few people are still paying attention.
Saturday afternoon on 4/20? Uh, yesterday was one of my lowest reader days this year. (And it tied for largest amount of comments yesterday. It was only the third largest story yesterday out of 8 though.)
Speaking of 4/20, this warning might be of interest. https://www.silive.com/news/2019/04/report-fentanyl-laced-marijuana-hits-the-streets-of-upstate-new-york.html?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=statenislandadvance_sf&utm_source=facebook
Four-twenty comment, Supreme Court rulings:
STAUB v. BAXLEY (1958) 355 US 313
“. . . an ordinance which makes the peaceful enjoyment of freedoms which the Constitution guarantees contingent upon the uncontrolled will of an official – as by requiring a permit or license which may be granted or withheld in the discretion of such official – is an unconstitutional censorship or prior restraint upon the enjoyment of those freedoms.”
SHUTTLESWORTH v. BIRMINGHAM (1969) 394 US 147
“. . . our decisions have made clear that a person faced with . . . an unconstitutional licensing law may ignore it and engage with impunity in the exercise of the right . . . for which the law purports to require a license.”
BRADY v. UNITED STATES (1970) 397 US 742
Waivers of constitutional rights not only must be voluntary but must be knowing, intelligent acts done with sufficient awareness of the relevant circumstances and likely consequences.
You confuse “discretion” with arbitrary. If a valid benefit exists for regulation, the government can do so but not based solely at the whim of a person- official or not. There are rules that allow equal access based on whether the individual is capable of providing public good or not. That guarantees freedoms for the most people even if it curtains the freedoms of individuals who seek to control in ways not to the public good.
I also think this story is dumb, but I love how you defend yourself to commenters on the regular, and always do it in a logical way. You do a great job with this site and that’s especially appreciated as LOCO circles the drain.
I appreciate that this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But I try to do a variety of stories that capture different people’s interests. (I’m not much for sports myself but I try to get them in when possible because I know how passionate people can be and I want to help people get the info they need. We all just need to try and understand that it isn’t some nefarious plot that other people are interested in things we aren’t.)
Thanks for everything u do Kym
I’d definitely vote that there controlling it in ways not for the public good.im with you central Humboldt!!!!!
New list of abatements out for 4/20
Mighty big of our county in there last year in office.(some of them) we need a couple stand up candidates that are for the people and the economy to step up to the plate.ones that are ready to dive into the RIP off snake pit/viper den of extortion