Bad Credit

The Oil Slick: Support Your Local Media, Drink Tap Water

Date 12/5/1996 12:00 AM | Topic: Opinion

I stayed here over Thanksgiving break this year. My parents weren't home, my sister's in Austria, so I saw no real reason in spending Thanksgiving in my empty house when I could spend it in my empty dorm. And I could work at KWLC and make some money, so why not? But while I was here I came to a couple of realizations about our campus that I'd like to vent some spleen about.

The first is the sad fact that people don't really listen to KWLC. I know, I've worked there quite a bit. The best way to exemplify this is that roommates don't listen to shows (sorry to do this to you Dan) (and Meg) (and Mik) (and Brad and Keith) (and everyone else, you know who you are) even though they say they will. I'm not trying to make my roommates present and past feel guilty (hopefully they know that I'm cool with this­even you Meg) but rather I'm pointing to a bigger picture. Presuming that when one group of people says "yeah, we'll listen to your show" and ten minutes later they don't, many other groups of people do the same, and if the people that actually know DJs don't actually listen, how many other folks do?

I do know that KWLC has its share of listeners. I'm sure that there are regular listeners. I'm just concerned by the lack of real student support. I'm as guilty of this as anyone else, but I've been thinking a lot about this. Here at CHIPS, we actually think sometimes that people don't read what we write. People ask me questions about stuff that they can read about in the paper, sometimes in the very paper that they are holding in their hands when they ask me their question. Of course we've commented a couple of times this semester about the lack of letters. As Assistant Editor, part of my job is to read and reread every article for errors (and I admit that I've let some bad errors slip through) so by the time CHIPS comes out, I've read every article at least three or four times, occaisionaly upwards of ten times. So, I know the paper cold by the time Thursdays roll around and I guess I don't see why everyone doesn't read it through once. And I don't understand why our campus radio station isn't as popular as it should be on this campus.

Admittedly, reading in the New York Times of the heroes of Radio B-92 has influenced my feelings on this very strongly. I'm concerned that we here at Luther don't support our media outlets like we should. KWLC and CHIPS are practically all student­run and are as close as we're going to get to having a true voice on campus, short of starting a genuinely independent organ (R.I.P. Voice. immer fragen warum!). LCTV is already practically dead, and while I don't think that the radio and newspaper are going to follow, at least anytime soon, I wonder what would happen if they did. Would it be business as usual for the majority of students? I'd hope not. Stand up for your voice.

Also over break, I discovered that the vending machines in the dorms sell bottled water. What kind of yuppie crap is this? I bought a bottle of the stuff thinking it was tonic water so I could mix drinks and was horribly disappointed. Upon sampling the delectable beverage I discovered, much to my horror, that I'd paid sixty cents for something that tastes just like what comes out of the water fountain in my dorm. What is this? Boycott Chippewa Falls (just because it pisses me off). Until next time...

--

Erik Berry
Assistant Editor

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