I thought the saga of St. Olaf’s sale of WCAL to MPR ended over a year ago (See this Northfield News article from Feb. 2006 titled: Regents approve plan for WCAL funds.)
When the sale was announced back in 2004, I supported it as the Regents rationale that the station didn’t have that much to do with the faculty or student body or the mission of the college anymore made sense to me.
But it’s not over. I got an email from Northfielder Ruth Sylte who maintains a blog called SaveWCAL: The story of the first listener-supported radio station in the USA.
Her Dec. 28th post announced that “St. Olaf College filed a petition in District Court requesting the court to approve St. Olaf’s plans to repurpose the funds that it acknowledges it holds in the WCAL charitable trust” and her March 8 post gives her account of the Rice County District Court hearing, which continues on April 13.
I tried to find something about this on the St. Olaf web site but came up empty. Is this much ado about nothing or are there genuine storm clouds brewing once again for the college over this issue?
A point of clarification. I am only one of a small group of SaveWCAL volunteers who has access to the LiveJournal site and the information on there is not necessarily my personal writing or opinions.
As the SaveWCAL president, I am the main official spokesperson for the organization.
However, as we have done in all our SaveWCAL efforts and on the old SaveWCAL.org web site (from where we got much of the information that is now populating the LiveJournal site), many posts are actually the result of a number of individual contributions from a variety of SaveWCAL supporters.
If the SaveWCAL LiveJournal was simply my own effort, I would put my name on it — but it is the compilation of the efforts of many, and that’s how we want to maintain it. Thanks.
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